Unbound Unlocked: George B. Thomas

Welcome to Unbound Unlocked, the Sound of Inbound summer series where we dive into HubSpot topics before the new and exciting Unbound Conference.

George shares a lot of his instincts and insights on the “un-conference”, speaking as a true HubSpot evangelist. How is community being centered around the show, and how is community being centered around the platform at large? We had a lot of fun with George and cannot wait to see him in Boston in September!

Check out this episode on YouTube and Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

• Episode Transcript

  Podcast Intro

  Mark: Hello, everybody, and welcome to a very special start of our summer series for "The Sound of Inbound" called "Unbound Unlocked," where we're getting ready for HubSpot's Unbound conference this fall and talking to some really special HubSpot guests this summer. Who are we talking to today?

  Aaron: So today, we have an Unbound speaker at this year's conference. His name is George B. Thomas. For those that know him, you know that he is an amazing educator and a mentor, and he's just an inspiration overall. He was so kind to lend his time with us today and have a chance to think and explore about the future of marketing. So I'm very excited to have this conversation with him.

  Mark: Yeah, it's going to be great. You guys know George. I hope that you enjoy hearing from him today. Join us right now, and we're going to be talking to George B. Thomas on "Unbound Unlocked."

  The Interview

  Aaron: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to "The Sound of Inbound" and to a very special summer series that we're going to call "Unbound Unlocked." We are sitting down with some of the most brilliant minds taking part in this year's Unbound conference, and today's guest, if you don't already know him, because you really should, his name is George B. Thomas. George and I actually have a bunch of things in common. We're both proud North Carolinians, we're both longtime members of the HubSpot community, and we believe that technology continues to evolve. Business is still fundamentally about people. That's what business is all about, right?

  During a recent conversation, George actually shared a thought that stuck with me, and it goes like this: "Until you embrace being vulnerable, you'll miss out on the magic moments of life." And I love that. That idea seems to show up in everything that he does, from the way he approaches business and marketing, and the way that he serves his clients, teaches others, builds community within the HubSpot ecosystem, and so much more. Today, we're going to talk about the philosophy behind his superhuman framework, I'm sure. We'll also get into how he wrangles, I call it, the beast that is AI, and what it means to lead with a mindset of human servanthood.

  And of course, he and I have got to talk about what we're excited about this year. For the first time ever, the Unbound Conference is coming to us in September in Boston. It's the Inbound Conference rebranded as the Unbound Conference, and there's a whole new mentality coming to this year's show, and George is fortunate enough to be one of this year's speakers. So that's why I wanted him here on "The Sound of Inbound." So George, thank you for joining us here on our podcast. We love having you.

  George: Aaron, I already love being here. I'm curious of what's going to come about of this. In that intro, I got goosebumps. I got excitement. I was like, "I can't wait to hear what George is going to say. Wait, I'm George." So, this is going to be awesome.

  Aaron: I'm going to put you on the spot already. Like many famous people, you have decided to put your middle initial in your name. What does the B actually stand for?

  George: Yeah. So first of all, it is a little bit of a story because George Thomas, if you look it up on Google, it's either a mathematician or a Civil War hero—

  Aaron: I thought you were both those people.

  George: I am neither of those humans. And so the B stands for Benjamin, but I always say it as George Benjamin Thomas, so that's kind of a little inside joke there.

  Aaron: I love it. This is just a crazy coincidence. I have actually seen George speak for a number of years at the Inbound Conference, and we also get his newsletter. We also follow him online. And I didn't realize until very recently when you joined our partner user group, because George and I are actually in the same partner user group with HubSpot, that you're in North Carolina. You actually live outside of Charlotte. So we have another North Cackalacky on the show. Go Canes!

  George: Let's go. We moved here 12 years ago from Ohio. My son actually started to come down to Johnson & Wales to be a chef, to go to school. And my wife, on one of the trips down, she said, "Have you ever thought about..." And I said, "Yes." And she just looked at me, and you're like, "You're going to ask me if I've thought about moving here." And, man, it was supposed to be a three-year plan, Aaron, but it ended up being around the same time that I got hired for Marcus Sheridan in the sales line, and he said these words to me: "You can live anywhere you want to." And so a three-year plan turned into 30 days. We went from Ohio to North Carolina and have not looked back since. It is amazing people, amazing weather. It's just been a great adventure.

  Aaron: Yeah, it has been for us, too. We've had options to leave many, many times over, and we actually did a little stint in Arizona. But the moment there was an opportunity to come back this way, I was like, "Of course, we got to get back to North Carolina. I don't want to go anywhere." Yeah, this state has a lot to offer, and you're actually in a different area than we are, and I think there's probably a little bit more of a different culture from Raleigh down to Charlotte. But you always bring all the good vibes, so I'm sure it's rocking and rolling outside of Charlotte. You're actually really near the South Carolina border, too, aren't you?

  George: Yeah. For now, yes. It's funny, this is the first time I'm going to talk about this in public. Right now, we live in a town called Indian Trail. When we moved here, it felt kind of country. Not anymore. So we're actually under contract for a new home, and we are going to move over to the Kings Mountain area, kind of over by Crowder Mountain and whatnot. So, looking forward to that adventure over the next couple of months. But yes, kind of towards the South Carolina border, Gastonia area in the near future. But yeah.

  Aaron: Well, one thing that I do love about just North Carolina in general is the diversity of the areas that we can be a part of, and having the beach not very far away and having the mountains nearby, too. It is just a beautiful place. So for those that are interested, North Carolina is becoming a pretty hot spot for a lot of things going on. Google's here now. Apple's building their campus here. Disney's building their first neighborhood right outside of Raleigh. And George is here. So why else would you want to look away? You got to come check it out. Also, it's a big foodie state, wouldn't you say? It's a pretty big foodie state.

  George: Oh, yeah. You can always find something good to eat, my friend, without a doubt.

  Aaron: Without a doubt. And then, of course, because George right now, at least, he's located really near to the South Carolina border, Fourth of July is coming up, and he can hook you up with some tasty fireworks, right? From South Carolina. Yeah.

  George: Oh, yeah. It's a hop, skip, and a jump away right to that Phantom Fireworks. Not sponsored, but hey, give Aaron a call.

  Aaron: Yeah, hashtag not a sponsor. Okay. I thought just for a second, I was reading about your background, and you put this out on your sleeve, and you put this on your website that you have created a theme in your business. And I thought that's a really good little mini story about your origin and what you're doing today and how you got into marketing and how your whole family got into marketing, right?

  George: It's a made-up word, if I'm being completely honest with everybody. But here's the dilemma. The problem is, I worked for two other agencies, really three other agencies, for about 10 years. And then in 2022, I started George B. Thomas LLC. I was going to just go out, eke out an existence, and help people with HubSpot, help humans with HubSpot. And all of a sudden, just good things started to happen. You put good things out, good things start to happen, and I started getting more clients, and I needed more help.

  And so, I hired my son to do podcast editing and video editing, and then I hired my daughter to do social media and my wife to do project management and my other daughter to do content stuff, and then my other son to do podcast editing and video editing as well. And all of a sudden, we had this—And by the way, we also have Jorge, who lives in Mexico. He's like my HubSpot right-hand guy. Oh my gosh, he's amazing. Once in a lifetime, you find that employee where you're like, "Oh, dear Lord above, please, let this human always work for me."

  So back to the theme, though. In 2023 or 2024, I took the whole family to Inbound at that point, now Unbound. And the dilemma is this. Aaron, I would be like, "Yeah, this is my family." And then I'd be like, "Well, this is my team." And it just got to be like, how do I introduce these people? My entire life, they've been my family. Now they are, but they're not. And so also my daughter, Kaylee, she goes, "Dad, why don't you just introduce us as the theme?" And I'm like, "Say more, please." And she's like, "The family team." Brother, as a marketer, I was like, "I can sell this."

  Aaron: You might even build a trade market.

  George: Yeah, I literally started AB testing, like, "Yeah, this is our theme." And everybody was like, "Theme?" "Yeah, family team." And they're like, "Aha." And as soon as I got the like, "Aha," I was like, "We're onto something." It's on the website. We always talk about it. And so yeah, the theme was born at Inbound 2023 or 2024, just because I didn't know how to introduce humans.

  Aaron: That is so beautiful. So in 2025, my daughter attends NC State, go pack, and she's in the business school, and she's looking into a profession in marketing. And she was really keen on what we were working on in our business last year. And she's seen me work the Inbound show for years. She decided to be a part of the applicant pool and became an emerging voice, I think they might call it. And so she actually got to go to the conference last year with a role and attend for the first time a marketing conference, with me and my wife. So it became a little mini theme.

  And it is really special to have these shared experiences. We do have a life and a work balance of sorts, but we've spent so much time working, so we do enjoy the times when we can actually get a chance to work with our loved ones, and especially when they're talented and they can bring so much value to our clients, and they have a different perspective on things. My wife has actually a background in working in healthcare, and when she brings that experience to the table for all the B2B stuff that we do, she's always like, "Wow, it would've been easier working in a hospital and working with patients than it is with our own clients." And it is true. It's like trying to put things in perspective.

  I was curious, though, for you, George, maybe you've mentioned this to other folks before, but did you always think you were going to be in marketing? Did you always think this was going to be your path? Or this is just where you ended up? Or how did it happen?

  George: Life is crazy, my friend. So no, I never woke up and said, "You know what? I want to grow up to be a marketer." To be honest with you, this journey actually starts, this part to get where we're at, starts at me as a youth pastor at a church. And all of a sudden, that church needed a website. They started doing the music background on the screens. And so I started messing around with a program called PhotoDraw, then into Photoshop 1.1, and learned HTML and CSS to build the church website and was like, "Hey, I like this nerd stuff. I'm kind of creative." And I had always been a sketch and draw and paint kind of person, but not real digital.

  And so that actually led me into this journey of, I started a, what I like to call a redneck business. My first business I started was Graphics for Worship, where we would create graphics for other churches that they could buy on CDs that we sold on eBay. Woo-ha. But we made enough to build a website, and we had other people selling their stuff on our website, too, and eventually ended up selling that to SermonSpice, which was big in the space back then.

  And so fast-forward, I end up getting a job working at an agency, and I had never worked for an agency. Design, development, then they asked me to do some video editing. And I'm the type of guy that is a learn-it-all. And let me explain. Even in the interview process, I went up to this agency I had this dumb blue windbreaker on. I didn't have any book to show anybody. And there was one guy, I'm being interviewed by four people, I'm like, "Oh my God, what did I do to myself? Why am I here?" And this one guy keeps just kind of looking at me, and I'm talking, and I'm like, "I'm self-taught, and I taught myself this, this, this."

  And so they go over and they talk, and finally they come back. Aaron, the one guy goes, "Hey, we're going to give you a 60-day probational period, and if you can hack it, then we'll keep you. But just know that this is 60 days to see what you can do." And the guy goes, "Have you ever used..." I want to say LinkedIn, but that's not it. InDesign. Sheesh, getting old sucks. He goes, "Have you ever used InDesign?" And I go, "In what?" And he goes, "InDesign." I go, "Well, I've used Photoshop and Illustrator, but I've never used InDesign." And he goes, "Well, you're going to have to know how to use that to do what we're doing." By the way, his name's Eric Jacob. He was the creative director, and he's been a friend ever since. And so I went home, and this is back in the days of Lynda.com, and I started watching Lynda.com.

  Aaron: I saw Lynda at a conference once, and she looked just like her logo.

  George: Yeah, it looked like—

  Aaron: It's crazy ... Edna Mode from "Incredibles."

  George: Yes. Yes, exactly. She would wear all black with boots and stockings, and this crazy, fun bowl haircut, and she'd just walk around.

  Aaron: It was, yes, she was—

  George: Yep.

  Aaron: ... epitomizing that persona.

  George: It was crazy. I loved it so much.

  Aaron: Yeah.

  George: So I started watching Lynda.com tutorials, and I came back. This was a Thursday, by the way, the interview. I came back the following Monday morning, walked up to his desk, and I laid three Lynda.com certifications on his desk that I knew how to use—"Hey, I know how to use InDesign now." And he looked over at the guys, and he goes, "I told you."

  And so the reason I'm sharing this is because there's an importance to having a growth mindset, because when I found HubSpot, right, I went through agencies. I ended up getting bought by Wild Boy in 2012. That's when we found Inbound. We won two tickets to Inbound. It was like this serendipitous moment that led me to Marcus Sheridan. But as soon as I found HubSpot Academy, I basically Lynda.com'd HubSpot Academy, meaning I'm going to learn it all. And it's because of that growth mindset, because of the ability to be a learn-it-all and not a know-it-all, that that's how the brand was built, like day after day, brick after brick, tutorial after tutorial, podcast after podcast, of learn something and teach it. Learn something and teach it. Learn something and do it. Do it, teach it. And that's the pattern, especially now. Ladies and gentlemen, right now, that is the pattern that you have to be in to survive or thrive or flourish, whatever word you want to use, in this world that we're in and definitely moving into.

  Aaron: There's a skill I think that is an important—You just mentioned something. It's not just learning it, it's also teaching it. It's because you can learn something, but when you have to teach it, you have to really understand and absorb that information. And so it's almost as if even if you're not asked to teach something, it would still be put that challenge out there for yourself to see if you know it well enough that you could teach somebody else.

  And in our market, of course, what you and I do all day long in trying to get folks to better understand how to build a good growth engine, we have to do a lot of teaching. It's not consultative if it's not teaching. So there is a lot of things like mentorship or enablement, if you want to call it that, too, that I think we are doing every single day. And that is a skill that you really have to hone in if you want to be successful right now. I love the fact that you have that mindset. What did you call it? You just said it's a growth mindset.

  George: Growth mindset. Yeah.

  Aaron: Yeah. I love that. That is actually really, really good. You said for a moment that you found HubSpot, and you won tickets. I didn't realize that was one of your origin stories. So you weren't working with HubSpot yet when you went to Inbound.

  George: No. So, I was working at this little agency in Massillon, Ohio, called Wild Boy, and here's a fun co-inky-dink: it was actually founded by a 19-year-old who was one of my youth kids when I was a youth pastor. And he came, circled back around, said, "Hey, I'm starting this small agency. Would you want to come work for me?" And what's fun is, and this tells you a little bit of something about maybe how I live life, I had a job that was an agency in Akron, Ohio, and I jumped, after talking to my wife, of course, jumped at the opportunity to go do something different with him in a small agency to see what we could build or what we could grow.

  And so we were sitting in the office one day. I was working on a website. I used to be the guy where it was like a pizza and a 12-pack of Coke coming in, and a website came out the other side. That was George, right? And so we're sitting there working, and all of a sudden, our social media guy, John, comes running. He's like, "Guys, you got to check out the world's largest webinar by a company called HubSpot." And we're like, "A what by what?" And so all of a sudden, he's bringing it into the conference room. And we go, and we're sitting in there, and Aaron, we hear these words. By the way, this is back when it's Mark Kilens, Sarah Bedrick, Chris LaDolce, like the old school HubSpot Academy.

  We hear these words, "We're going to give away 10 free tickets to the top 5% of tweeters to our event called Inbound." And Zach, the owner, is sitting there with his legs crossed and just watching, and I'm just sitting there watching. And I kid you not, John is over there like his fingers are on fire! He's tweeting everything possible. Long story short, we win two free tickets. This is the sucky part: John stays home. Zach and I go to Boston.

  So we go to Boston, though, and we learn about HubSpot. I see Gary Vaynerchuk speak for the first time. Zach and I dip our feet into the seaport, because it wasn't in... It was in the Cambridge area, not where it is now. We're sitting there. We're having a nice little beverage. We're looking at the Boston skyline, and we're like, "Something is something right here." And so it was because of that event, we came back, and we bought HubSpot for the agency to start teaching people about HubSpot and using HubSpot, and I started learning HubSpot. So if we don't win tickets, I don't go to Boston, we don't start using HubSpot, I don't end up working for Marcus, I don't end up on this podcast talking to Aaron. Isn't that crazy?

  Aaron: It's crazy. For me, the dot-to-dot was, strangely enough, similar in the fact that somebody referred HubSpot to me, too. They kept sending me articles over and over and over again, and I kept going like, "Where are you getting these articles from? I don't need all these freaking emails from you, man." And they just kept sending them to me. And finally, I opened one up, and I started reading the articles, and I'm thinking, "Oh, this would really resonate with the group that I'm working with right now."

  And I think at the time, I thought it was just another spin on public relations, honestly. Thought leadership, public relations, reputation management. But the more I understood how to nurture and what they were really trying to teach about, and I feel like this is one of the things that I got known for. It's like the art and science of HubSpot. There's the art of it, of what inbound really offers, and the science of it is the platform that enables it. And, so in 2014, I went for the first time. And when I left that show, George, I came home going, "I want to write a book."

  There were so many things that were just so exciting to me about what was going on in that world that I felt like we could take great advantage of. And we did. And it wasn't even a year later, our company was bought out by IBM, and we were one of the HubSpot customers of the year. And I got to do all sorts of things with the HubSpot crew, talking about what inbound was going to do for us. So it wasn't a software platform for me. It was a much bigger thing. And the thing where I want to get into, maybe in the second half we'll talk more about it, but it's the community of it now.

  So when people say, people might think that we just use this word too many times a day, HubSpot. But it's like with Google. It's like for us, this is our version of where we live, our ecosystem, where a lot of people live and work inside of the Google ecosystem. We live and work inside the HubSpot ecosystem. So there's a lot of things that come out of that when you have a lot of like-mindedness, and leveraging a system like this and what it can do for yourself and for businesses. And it becomes something very interesting that you want to celebrate and share because it's what our life is now. We live inside this ecosystem, yeah.

  George: Yeah, listen, to me, HubSpot is home, right? In 2012, one of the things that really just kind of hooked me in as, again, a recovering youth pastor sitting in this marketing auditorium is like—

  Aaron: Recovering youth pastor?

  George: Yeah, without a doubt. That's a whole other podcast, brother. That's a whole other podcast. So here's the fun part about this, though, is they were talking about being human and doing it in a human way. And that really resonated with me. And at that point, it was 2,500 people. That was the size of the event in 2012. And I'm like, "Man, these humans want to help each other. These humans want to do things in a different way. I think I want to be part of this." And listen, I've backed this pony since 2012, so that's a lot of years, and I've watched the ecosystem change. I've watched people come and go.

  But at the end of the day, it has always been not about the software, but about the outcome of being able to teach doing business in a more human way, and this just happens to be the toolset that we can now use to do that. So you think about that, what I'm preaching is user experience. What I'm preaching is education. What I'm preaching is value, right? And so I'm always talking now about human-powered, AI-assisted, content-driven, and how can you be the business that gets to time-to-first value?

  Aaron: You said everything except for, and I think you would agree with me, customer experience. It's the entire customer journey. And for me, the discussions I have with new folks that have never met me before or they want to work with our agency, I try to explain how brand has a role throughout the entire customer experience, and there are very few platforms that would help enable that. And watching HubSpot evolve over the years, it's grown into that role. It didn't start there at all. It wasn't their initial take on it. It was really just help the army of one, getting into email marketing.

  And now here we are looking at something that really is valuable across the entire customer lifecycle chain. And I think something you probably agree with, too, because I know you shared this with me in the pre-interview. You and I have had some big and some small influences about where the platform has come to this date. And, I don't think a lot of companies are open to that. It's like they don't want to hear it from the audience and from the users out there. Like, "We know what we're doing. We got a roadmap. We're just going to do what we do." But this is not that way at all. It almost feels like they have absolutely inside out the whole thing. We're going to talk about the Unbound conference in a few minutes, and it's like they've un-companied themselves by trying to get a lot more of that. It's community-led. It has a lot more controls that you'd think, okay, they're in place to actually make sure that the community needs it. They're not just out there blindly doing stuff.

  George: There's two things I want to poke at before we move forward. One, if HubSpot was a human, I would bet $100 that we would make fun of them because they would have big ears. They would be like Dumbo ears. HubSpot is the most listening of organizations that I think I've ever met in my life. And whenever I've got on a product call with the product team, they are the most curious and like, "Just give us more." And like, "We know it might be painful, but just be honest." And I'm like, "Man, that's legit right there."

  The other thing, and so if you're not doing that in your business, by the way, I'm saying you should become the Dumbo of your experience. You should be listening to everybody. And so here's the other piece that I want to tap on because it is so vitally important right now and especially in the future. If you're listening to this and you're like, "My brand? I don't have a brand." Yes, you do. You're just not nurturing it. You're not protecting it. You don't understand it. Every human, every organization has a brand. And the times that you're not spending building it, it's eroding.

  And so in the future, the power is going to be the brand. And so you have to think about things like how do you want to show up? What is your voice and tone? What are the guardrails and goalposts? Like all of the things. Because trust me, now and moving in the next two, five, 10 years, those that invest in building brands and becoming the experts and helpers that they can be, will be the ones that will still continue to find ways to flourish in the future that we are facing. That's all I'm saying. If you're not focused on brand, please, by all that is holy, take nothing else away from this podcast episode. Start just building a brand now, and as fast and as hard as you can. Without burning yourself out, of course. Be human about it.

  Aaron: There is a lot of discussion around company brands, but individuals have their own brand too. And I'm curious, when it comes to yourself, what do you think is the one word you want people to remember you by? What is your brand ownership idea for George B. Thomas?

  George: One word is human. If I back up a little bit and give you on my tombstone, catalyst for growth. Right? I want to be the guy who helped other people realize that they could achieve things that they once thought were impossible. I want to be the catalyst for growth. Whether that's in business, whether that's with HubSpot, whether that's with AI, whether if that's personally.

  If you think about my past, right? Bouncer at a bar becomes youth pastor, becomes HubSpot guy. There's a thread of I'm listening and helping humans along the way, right? And before that, military, by the way. But anyway, so there's just this thread of helping humans and trying to get them. Because I have a really interesting childhood. One-room log cabin, no running water, age of three. Riding a pony to a one-room schoolhouse, age of nine. Being told I'd never amount to anything by a math teacher at age 17 and dropping out. Joining the Navy at 17 and a half. And I always was in this place of I don't need a handout, I just want a hand up. And as soon as I get a hand up, boy, woo, I'm going to attack. I'm just going to go, and I'm going to give people around me hand-ups to where they can—I want to see people run. And so that was a long-winded way to say catalyst for growth.

  Aaron: One thing I like about that is it's a growth mindset, but it doesn't have to be about being a termite and always having to eat and grow, and eat and grow, and eat and grow, and there's no end to it. I think growth is also about establishing stability, and understanding how to maintain that. And in certain points, being really responsible about how you share that understanding to other people too, so they don't become super greedy. You are probably, again, we've only had a few interactions, but you are the least greedy person I've met. In this world that we work in, you're so giving and so generous. You even said it during our pre-interview, too. You're like, "There's no special sauce. I'm just going to show you everything." And I think I'm quoting you on the quote. And it is something that I agree with as well. It's like I want to exude a certain kind of personality that I hope that the companies we all work with will have the same kind of personality. We rub off on them, essentially, and then they want to do those things too. You definitely make some magic moments, man, and I absolutely love it for you. And I love being part of it. So I want to get to something fun. You want to have a little fun with me?

  George: Sure. Yeah, I guess.

  Hot Takes with George B. Thomas

  Aaron: So this is a special summer series that I'm calling "Unbound Unlocked," because we want to try to get a little preview of where we're going to go with this conference this year. And this conference is very untraditional. It's going to be doing a lot of things that we hope this year will really change the nature of what it means to get together for these live events, because it's so important for the human-to-human connection, as George talks about. But before we do that, I think it would be really fun to play a little game I call "Hot Takes with George B. Thomas." And of course, George, I'll read a little bit of music. Hot takes with George B. Thomas. Give me them tasty hot takes. So I'm going to say a certain statement here that feels a little bit maybe questionable, a little bit maybe critical. And so—

  George: I'm getting nervous.

  Aaron: Yeah. And so I want to see what George's hot take is on it. Okay, you ready?

  George: I'm ready.

  Aaron: This is fast and furious. Here we go. First one, nothing is better than email marketing.

  George: Mm. Sure. I mean, here's the thing, everybody wants to talk about email being dead, but I've seen some really great returns on email, especially when social is getting completely burnt out. Anyway, I'll stop there. It's a hot take.

  Aaron: Okay, he's into it. He wants the email marketing. Okay. PDFs are forever.

  George: Oh, without a doubt. I fed four of them to my AI assistant today, because we're going through home inspection. It's way too much to even understand, and I just need an expert to diagnose it. So yeah, I think PDFs live forever.

  Aaron: And you think that PDFs should still be used as a marketing tool, too? Like a download for a PDF?

  George: Now, if it's that, that's a different question, by the way. So I would say they're dead for marketing because it should be some type of interactivity on your web system. Notice I didn't say website. But remember, you have a chasm of humans, so maybe it's an interactive piece that also has a downloadable version of it, but it's not gated. It's just if you want that, we're there to serve you.

  Aaron: The interactive, you know what that is? That's tasty.

  George: Ooh! Oh, that's kind of tasty.

  Aaron: Oh, that music is tasty. We have fans, George. We have fans.

  George: I love this.

  Aaron: Okay, next one. Forms are dead.

  George: No.

  Aaron: No?

  George: No. The way that you use them, "Knock it off," that's dead. But if you use them in a human way, that is a conversation. So here's the thing. I don't ever think of forms as conversion. I think of forms as conversation, meaning it's a conversation starter versus a sales conversion point.

  Aaron: There's a whole other podcast on this one. If everybody's listening to this on a short little video or sticking here on social media, I absolutely agree with the fact that it needs to be more of a conversation. If you haven't tried any of the AI chatbots on your website, please check them out. All right, the next one. The future of search is asking, not searching, and I'll give it a little bit more context. I think that people might say they're just going to type in, "I need a plumber," right? And I think the future of search might be more like, "I'm experiencing this problem. I don't know what to do. What do I do next? Do I need a plumber? Do I not need a plumber?" And they continue to go down this thread of more of a conversation than really just a search with a result.

  George: The future of search is specificity. That's the future of search. And yes, it will be conversational, it will be a question, it will probably be mobile or in your glasses or in your earbud, less a little white box on a browser.

  Aaron: All right, next one. Every marketer should learn sales.

  George: Oh, absolutely, 100%. Every marketer should learn sales, and every salesperson should learn marketing. You should be a mix of the two, because then you would be a dope human because you just understand, and understanding is key.

  Aaron: The company blog is making a comeback. I don't know if I would say that it's ever gone away, but I think the way people use it... What do you think?

  George: Yeah, I don't think it should have ever gone away, and if you're still somebody who hasn't used it, that's dumb. And if you're not having your humans actually show up in it to show their own expertise, because this goes back to the brand conversation. What is it? The rising tide rises all boats, or something like that. Listen, I was blogging on the sales line. Marcus was blogging on the sales line. I blog on ours. Jorge does video tutorials. The idea is if you, as the leader, give a place to lift your humans that are helping other humans, you've just created—It's a hot take. I'll be quiet.

  Aaron: Okay, the next one. Nobody wants another newsletter.

  George: Nobody wants another bad newsletter. If it's a good newsletter, and again, I keep saying this word, I feel like a broken record. Well, here's the thing. They don't want a crappy newsletter, but if it's a newsletter that adds value and is a newsletter that leads them to the places that they need to be to learn the things they need to learn, everybody will take it all day long.

  Aaron: I think that is perfect. It has to be a win-win. I call it the "we all the way home" problem. You're just talking about yourself. "We do this, and we do that, and we did that, and we did this." Stop talking about yourself. Talk about everybody else's successes, share on that, and that shows that you know what you're doing, and you're doing your job. So again, beautiful little insight there. Okay. I'm going to just go with maybe one more, if that's cool.

  George: Okay.

  Aaron: AI-generated content is making human creativity more valuable, not less.

  George: It depends on whose hands it's in. There's a lot of crap happening out there, a lot of what people are calling slop, which I hate that word. But it's like anything else. You put a football in the hands of Cam Newton or Tom Brady, or you put a basketball in the hands of Shaquille O'Neal or Michael Jordan, it's magic, right? You put an AI in somebody's hand who's uneducated and unsystematized, it's not magic. It's pfft. You give me the time to build something or teach something or do something, my creativity is off the chain. I've built some things in the last six to nine months that I never thought I could build before, but that's because human-powered, AI-assisted.

  Aaron: I love it. All right, so everybody, when we come back, we're going to unlock what's next. From AI to modern marketing and to the opportunity waiting for all marketers at the very first Unbound conference happening this fall. We're very excited. George and I are going to be there, and George is going to be speaking. So, I wanted to get into that right after the break. Please stay tuned here on "The Sound of Inbound."

  Part 2: Deep Dive into Systems, AI, and Unbound

  Aaron: Hello, everybody. We are back here with George B. Thomas, and we're going to be talking a little bit more now about what's coming in the world of marketing, and especially what we think is going to be shared coming up at this year's Unbound conference. It's the first year HubSpot has had a conference of this nature, and we're really excited about it. It's the evolution of inbound into unbound and how things are now feeling very unlocked and unleashed. See what I'm doing there?

  George: Mm-hmm. I do. I can tell.

  Aaron: I know, dad jokes. We're just dads here.

  George: Mm-hmm.

  Aaron: So, George, I'm very excited to have you still here on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. I thought maybe the next question would just really get into what you're excited about in the world of marketing. So, what is it? What are you most excited about in the world of marketing right now?

  George: It's interesting because I feel like most people are going to be like, "The dude's going to say AI, because, you know." But honestly, it's systems and frameworks. I think that we're in a place where you can unlock your brain to the systems and frameworks that you might not have been able to build before and put into place.

  And this wraps all around this idea. I put a blog article out on our website, sidekickstrategy.com, maybe two months ago: Websites are dead, web systems are not, and really talking about the connective tissue of vibe coding or AI assistance to what your website used to be, to what it can be, and the layers that can actually work together as a system of what used to just be maybe brochureware for folks, but there can actually be some things under there that are moving the engines. And so I'll say the thing that I'm most excited about is organizations jumping on a bandwagon of building systems and frameworks around the things that they're doing.

  Aaron: When I started off, I built websites. They were almost, I think we called them brochurewebs. Brochurewebsites. They were very, very simple, boutique level, static. There is still, believe it or not, a lot of thinking out there like, "Just have to get this website launched," and they just think of it as a one-shot deal. They're going to post all this information, people will find it, we're good to go, and it doesn't come alive. I feel like that's a huge missed opportunity.

  So, I'm agreeing with you that I can't believe I'm still trying to sell this. When George said earlier he's a catalyst, I think you have to appreciate that. It's a continuing effort, and it gets harder, it seems like now, with all the new tools that are coming in to still get folks excited. But I'm sure, George, you deal with this constantly. I want people to understand the same thing. The website shouldn't be this one-shot thing. It needs to be a system. So, as you mentioned, it is a lot more, and it can do a lot more than just be a page to just say who we are, what we do, and have a contact form. It's got to be a real integral part of your whole growth strategy.

  George: Listen, if you're listening to this or watching this and your website process every two to three years feels like giving birth to triplets, you're doing it in the wrong way. You have to build a system that can be nimble and grow over time. That's the only way that you can keep up with the changing environments of the humans that you're actually serving with the problems that you're solving. There's no other way right now. It's just impossible.

  Aaron: Yeah. I agree. All right, so I'm curious on the AI front. Where do you think the marketers are getting AI wrong right now?

  George: I don't think they're spending enough time on the foundational elements. What I see is people will get handed a model—GPT 5.5, Opus 4.8, whatever it is—and they'll be like, "The model's super smart. Let me just go ahead and start doing this. Oh, by the way, I watched this YouTube video. I should probably go do some random custom instructions. There's this memory thing, but it's confusing. I really don't understand how to do it." And so they don't take the time to do the foundational piece.

  And what I mean by that is, Aaron, for me, when I saw AI, ChatGPT, two-plus years ago, I dove in immediately. Because when I saw AI, at first, I was like, "This is the fastest typist on the planet." And I should've paid attention in typing class, but I didn't, because I'm a one-two finger guy. And I was like, "Okay, so if this is the fastest typist, and I know I want to get my brain into this typist, I don't need you to be a writer because I don't need you to be creative. I can be creative. I can come up with the things that I want to talk about. I can be the strategist. I just need you to type."

  And so I started at the very foundation, and I've been teaching this to humans, and their mind is blown when we actually have this conversation, but I start with identities. And so it's like, what are your mindsets, your core values, your beliefs? And so we create these docs of the top 10 of each or top 15 of each. Then it's like, okay, from the business standpoint, what's the mission, vision? What's the business core values? What's the persona? And so we have these seven to nine documents that create a foundational identity. And so when I go in to use AI, I say, "Echo, can you please pick up the identity of George B. Thomas of Sidekick Strategies?" Or I'll say, "Can you pick up the identity of George B. Thomas of Spiritual Side of Leadership?" Right? And so now all of a sudden, it has the foundation to move forward.

  The other thing, too, when I say the foundation, is story bank. The amount of people that don't have story banks is crazy to me because another thing that I'll say, Aaron, is any of my meetings that I've had, I will have AI. I'll go say, "Hey, go look at the meeting I just had. Look for any personal or professional stories that we could use in the future." I did a podcast called "Beyond Your Default" for 60 episodes. I gave that to AI, and I said, "Hey, pull out all of my personal stories that I told along the way." Because again, this was all about the superhuman framework and the four cornerstones and the 10H pillars and my life. Because I had been asked, this is a crazy thing to ask, but I had been asked so many times by agency owners, "How do I get a George B. Thomas in my agency?" And I'm like, "Bro, there's no answer to that other than me."

  And so I was like, how do I unpack what's made me, me? And how do I think that makes me, me? And not from a, "I'm going to show the whole world," but from a very humble place of, "I'm going to lay on the couch for 60 episodes and unpack the stuff that's in my brain." But I gave that to AI and said, "Hey, pull out all of my personal stories." So when I start a prompt, Aaron, I literally go, "Hey, Echo," which by the way, for you who are like, "Who the frick is Echo?" Echo is the name of my assistant because I want it to echo me. And so—

  Aaron: That's the assistant that you developed. You developed it—

  George: Yeah. This is the assistant that I developed.

  Aaron: Got it.

  George: And so I'll literally say, "Hey, here's what we're going to do. We're going to write an article together." And I'll tell it the length that I want, and I want it to do deep research and use agent teams and sub-agents, blah, blah, blah, and use Quinn, my writer, and Finch, my editor, and anyway. But then what I can say that most people can't say, back to your question, is, "Hey, I want you to pick up the identity of George B. Thomas at Sidekick Strategies, and I want you to find a personal and professional story to thread into what we're teaching along the way. Make sure it contextually fits, and let's go ahead and get started." And so that is not a, "Can you write a blog article on SEO for me and make sure that it sounds like me because I'm a fun guy?" Boom.

  Aaron: The things that you're referencing, for those that are still learning and understanding how to leverage AI, in Google, they call it a gem. In Gemini, they call it a gem. In OpenAI, you can create or tell it you want it to memorize something, or you can create little special projects and folders in there, and you can say, "This is the context I need when I'm in this particular pocket. Here's where I want you to get started." And Claude has it. All the other ones have it, too.

  You're essentially giving it all the context you don't want it to forget about. Believe it or not, or maybe you do believe it, these tools do not go back into all of the history. They actually let go of things that are dated, and they start to only pick up things that are much more timely. So if you use it a lot, there's actually stuff that could actually be falling off its memory more recently. If you're not using it very much, maybe it's got a lot of context in it.

  But for me, what I've done, George, and I would recommend this to anybody, like you're saying, is if you build out an ideal client profile for your business, think about this as for yourself. What is your own persona, and what are you representing, and what's your tone? And then as I work in this tool, I have a gem, if I'm using Gemini, or I have this in OpenAI when I'm using that tool as well, and I'll take the best of things I have submitted, and I'll say, "Hold onto this for future reference." And then it does such a much better job, as you mentioned.

  The thing I felt like I was thinking you might talk about, but I want to get into the conference in a moment, is the agentic side. When we say what are marketers not doing right now well, or what they're getting wrong today and they should start to think more about, is thinking about AI not as a search tool. Oh my gosh, don't use it as a search tool. But think of it more as a sidekick. You want to create some tool sets in this where it's actually doing some things for you. It's not—

  George: Without a doubt.

  Aaron: Yeah. You want to mention where that's going?

  George: I'll give you one story on this. And by the way, when I say Echo, I'm literally talking about agentic without saying the word agentic, because I don't think many humans are like, "I don't even know what that means, but can I have a box to type in and maybe get my work done faster?" And I want to take them from that to where they can actually be. But I'll give you an example. We had been in business for almost four years, had zero case studies on our website because historically, the process of case studies was painful. And you needed a writer, and you needed to interview people, and I was like, "You know what? Let me see if Echo can actually help me solve this."

  And we built a system where we would give—Because by the way, we were helping humans that whole time. We just weren't telling the story of who we were helping. And so we literally built a form, and I asked my clients to go fill out the form. We asked Quinn, our agent, to use the /superwriter skill, which is a mixture of They Ask, You Answer, story, brand, Hermozi, and me, of things it looks at, and then go write the case study. And so it goes through a three-step process. There's multiple agents, because Morgan is our design agent that does the page layout, and Riley, the developer agent, and all that good stuff. And we went from zero case studies for almost four years to seven case studies in two days. And so I want you to think about that.

  And so now I think we might have nine or 10 on our website. And what's fun is it was doing two things. It would create the case study page, it would have the case study listing page, but it would grab the testimonial that they gave us and also go and put that on the testimonial page. You see, because it's a system that you build around people saying good stuff about you.

  Aaron: And that is something that I think people might be scared to use, but you can have it draft it all out, review it all, even go through iterations, and then just leverage that into the next platform. Copy-paste it yourself. I am working with a number of people, and I'm sure you're one of them, where you can actually have these tools do the entire build-out of the page, and all you have to do is hit publish.

  George: I call it give it hands, but as soon as you give it hands, you've got to have your human eyes in the loop. Meaning there has to be a place where it goes to draft mode, you look it over, you tweak it, blah, blah, blah. Then you can say, "Hey, okay, now let's go ahead and publish this and add the audio player that sounds like me to it because blah, blah, blah." Whatever publishing looks like for you. But I do talk about connectors, MCPs, CLIs, and APIs as far as giving your system hands, because you've taken the time to do the foundation and given it a brain.

  Aaron: So we're going to switch over to talking more about this little conference that's coming up, and how they—and why they rebranded it first. So they gave me a preview of this as well, and at first, I was like, "What? What is the name?" And I'm not sure if you had a similar reaction, but I'm just going to be honest about it.

  George: Honest, transparent as well. I do feel like I got so embedded in the inbound methodology, it always was a bigger thing for me. So it wasn't just about marketing. But I think that they felt like there was a certain stigma around the Inbound conference feeling like it's just about inbound marketing. And so I got where they were going with the "we want to rebrand it." And then when they revealed the name Unbound, I did have to take a beat. Take a beat, and I had to figure out, okay, is this something that makes sense now? What is that really going to do? How does it change the conference?

  And I was really fortunate to have Kat Tooley, I love that name, from HubSpot be on our podcast and talk about the origin story of Unbound and what it's supposed to mean and the mentality of it, and how she's trying to create an unconference of varying sort. So I'm curious, just first and foremost, what were your thoughts when they decided to rebrand it?

  Aaron: So I'm going to date myself, but when I first saw the announcement, I was like, "What you talking about, Willis?" I was like, "Wait, what the what?"

  George: But I try not to have these knee-jerk negative responses. That's just one of the things that I try not to do. And so I wanted to find more information. Luckily, there was more information. And then when I started to read about the choices of why, I actually was like, "Oh, this actually makes a lot of sense." Because me, I too am more of, "I'm here for the methodology of inbound." I'm more here like, hey, this is the "marketing religion," air quotes, if you're just listening to this, so you don't think I'm weird. But this is the marketing and sales religion that we've been teaching or training people on.

  And so to me, an I or a U, while it makes a big difference, it doesn't make a difference, if that makes sense. I'm still going to go there. I'm still going to add value. People are still going to be networking. People are still going to take their businesses to the next level because of what happens there. So let's go.

  Aaron: Over the years, when people ask me why do I like this conference so much, it was because it did have a purpose of inspiration and learning and networking and selling. It started to do a lot more than just one thing. I have talked to some colleagues recently that said they want to go to a conference and learn something. They really want to go there and learn. They don't want to just be showman stuff, and all these weird pop-up experiences, and people are taking pictures of themselves and all that kind of stuff. They really want to get something from it. I think that the last couple of years, people have been very surprised about who is coming in to speak, and they're like, "Wow, really? They're going to a marketing conference?" I'm like, "Well, it's more than a marketing conference."

  So maybe this is something that is really—it's a mindset. That's some of the things that they were sharing with you and I related to the strategy as to why they wanted to change things. It's not a strategy, it's a mindset. How do you unlock certain kinds of things that are going on in your business, and how do you now think about it in a much, much bigger way? So that's the Unbound. So yeah. What are you looking forward to the most in this first Unbound?

  George: Of course, I would be a terrible marketer/sales guy if I didn't say I'm excited about doing the talk: the five-layer marketing system, stop chasing tactics.

  Aaron: We're going to put that on screen as you say it, okay?

  George: Yeah. A 90-minute working session where I'm actually giving people a scorecard in five different layers that they can score themselves where they feel their business is now. Anyway, more of that, it's on the unbound.com website. You should go there, search George B. Thomas or the five-layer marketing system.

  But to be honest with you, I'm mostly excited to be surprised. And what I mean by that is if you think about the experience historically and it being a marketing conference or a business conference, there's always this moment where I'm like, "Okay, I didn't plan on this, but this is why I'm here." For instance, when I heard that they were going to have John Cena historically be a speaker at INBOUND, I was like, "What is this?" Right? And then I'm like, "Okay." But it was one of the dopest dope sessions that I think I've ever sat in.

  The other one that was a surprise for me—and I was just like, "I am here for this, and all of this"—was Spike Lee. But I didn't go to a business conference thinking that I'm like, "Man, I can't wait to hear all the business stuff from Spike Lee and what we're going to do." And so the moment of surprise. And so I would beg you, if you're watching this or listening to this right now, open yourself up to surprise and serendipity. And when I say that, what I mean is give yourself the flexibility for the magic moments in the hallway, for the, "Ooh, I was going to go to this one, but something's drawing me over here." Follow that gut, that heart, that whatever you want to call it, and give yourself the freedom of flexibility to just be surprised by all of the un-things that are going to happen at Unbound.

  Aaron: I love that, all the un-things. There is a series of different types of experiences that are going to be going on at this year's show. When you think about spending time to get outside of your shell, outside of the office, you want to experience a lot of different things when you finally take that time to do it. You're finally dedicating yourself like, "I'm going to stop everything. I'm going to get out." And it could be a great experience for a team or for an individual, but they're going to have all these interesting meetups that are vertically driven or they're also identity driven, community driven. It's really interesting what they're going to do, and they continue to grow on that.

  So when they think about this as being an unconference, they're really trying to make it that the content is coming from the community. It's not being a HubSpot software developer conference. It's not that. There are elements of it that do have the workshop component to it, and you are actually—I love that you're running a workshop, George. It's so beautiful. I hate doing this, and doing it right now as I talk to you. I don't want to talk at people. I want to talk with people. I wouldn't want to present at people. I would want to do something that felt a lot more driven as to what's the goal of this thing, and we're going to get something done today. And do it in that 90-minute time is so rewarding for everybody.

  George: Yeah.

  Aaron: And it's something they can't forget. So, I think people should spend the time to go to these kinds of experiences, especially when you think about the community that surrounds it all throughout the year. It's not just a one-off thing. It's continuing.

  George: Totally agree. I mean, I can't even—And this is not like, I'm not blowing smoke here. I'll just leave it at that. I can't imagine my life if I didn't go to INBOUND in 2012, or if I didn't go to INBOUND for every year after that. Just the education, the camaraderie. At this point, for me and a lot of humans, it's like a homecoming or a family reunion. That's the vibe of it. And so it's so powerful and impactful, as long as you go into it with what you're talking about, Aaron, and that's the right mindset and thoughts around what it is and could be versus expectations, which is a whole other podcast, because I try to zero expectations with a lot of things. But anyway.

  Closing Advice

  Aaron: For sure. Okay. Last question I was going to ask for you, just because I think it's important, and I feel so fortunate to have this much time with you today, because I think a lot of people would love to just hang out with you all day long and get into all the George B. stuff. But what's one piece of advice that you want to give a marketer right now that they could then thrive over in the next five years?

  George: Yeah. It's simple. Without a shadow of a doubt, the thing that you need to do is embrace curiosity and continue to ask yourself one question: Is it possible? And then you just go see if you can make that thing that you are curious about and wanted to build, see if it's possible. And again, I'm diving back into you, the human. Be curious, and ask yourself, "Is it possible?" Then grab your AI-assisted tool and be like, "I want to try to build this." And just go through the messy middle, go through the educational pains. But then when you get on the other side of, "Wow, I didn't think this was possible, but there it is," imagine what you're going to do next when you go, "But is this possible?"

  Aaron: Yeah. I think curiosity unlocks it all, right? I mean, that's going to unlock all those opportunities for yourself and for your company and your team and your business, for your family. I think as long as you're doing it in a positive way, I think yes, of course, it's going to unlock all sorts of things for you. And of course, I said unlock because this year's theme—

  George: It's Unbound—

  Aaron: ... is unlock and Unbound. This is a great way to end this podcast right now because it is about Unbound unlocked. This is great. So if you are interested in learning more about George, it doesn't take much. All you got to do is go online and start typing in "George B." and you'll find him. He's not the Civil War hero or the baseball player, I think you said earlier. But—

  George: Mathematician, but either way.

  Aaron: He is a hero amongst the HubSpot community. So go to georgebthomas.com, and I think he's also available through sidekickstrategies.com. I found George to be so captivating at the show. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn. I'm sure we'll put all the links up. But the Unbound conference, you can join us in Boston, September 16th through 18th. And if you haven't checked it out, please just go to unbound.com. And if you do reach out to me or any other partner out there that's going to be at the show, we have discount codes. So we'd love for you to join us at this year's conference. George, this has been so special and so much fun for you to do this with us this year and this special summer series of my Unbound Unlocked. Thank you so much for joining us here on "The Sound of Unbound."

  George: Aaron, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure, and you are a great interviewer, my friend.