Unbound Unlocked: Josh Curcio
For our penultimate episode of Unbound Unlocked, we sit down one on one with Josh Curcio of Protocol 80. In preparation for UNBOUND, Aaron and Josh explore how marketing, sales, and CRM strategy are evolving in the age of AI, better data, and more personalized customer experiences.
They dig into hot takes on email marketing, PDFs, newsletters, AI-generated content, and the future of search, all while making the case that human creativity and strategic thinking still matter more than ever.
Stay tuned to hear more about HubSpot’s reimagined conference experience, where Josh will be speaking on fixed CRM adoption: a blueprint for complex sales teams.
Check out this episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
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Mark: Welcome to another episode of Unbound Unlocked. Today, we're joined by Josh Curcio from Protocol 80. It was an exciting conversation with another insider, someone else who's speaking at a session here at Unbound.
Aaron: It was a really interesting conversation.
Mark: Yep. Josh comes from a very steep sales background. He's working for a very, very established HubSpot solutions partner agency, Protocol 80. I believe they're a diamond partner, so that means they have been quite involved—maybe more than 100-plus customers have worked with them over the years on the platform. So he has a lot to share as far as what works and what doesn't work for sales and marketing teams, and he's bringing that to Unbound this year.
Aaron: Yeah, and it was really nice to talk to somebody with more of a sales-focused background. Obviously, on Unbound Unlocked and Sound of Inbound, we're very marketing-forward, but the HubSpot platform is very big on the sales process as well, and those two teams really need to work together all the time. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Give it a like, give it a listen, and we'll see you at Unbound.
[Main Episode]
Aaron: Hello, everybody. We are here today on the Sound of Inbound with our special summer series we're calling Unbound Unlocked. Today, I am joined with a HubSpot diamond partner—Josh Curcio with Protocol 80. He is heavily involved in the HubSpot community, and I'm very excited to have him here. Josh, thank you so much for joining us.
Josh: Thanks for having me. Love to be here.
Aaron: Love having you, and we're going to talk about Unbound. That's what this whole series is about. Josh is fortunate enough to be teaching one of the sessions this year. The second half of our podcast will get into some of the interesting things that you're going to be teaching to all the sales teams. The name of the class is Fix CRM Adoption: A Blueprint for Complex Sales Teams. Did I get that right?
Josh: That's right.
Aaron: Okay, cool. To start off, people might want to understand your role with Protocol 80. You've probably been in the industry for over 10–15 years now. What's your role with Protocol 80?
Josh: I am Chief Revenue Officer and Partner at Protocol 80. I am primarily involved in sales, but I also get quite involved in complex HubSpot CRM things as they come up—whether that be technical, hands-on, or strategic. But to be fair, I've got people on our RevOps team that are much better than I am at that today. I've been out of the weeds as far as technical implementation. We'll leave it to the pros.
Aaron: With your role, is it a combination of marketing and sales, or is it distinctly on sales?
Josh: I do not do any marketing myself. We have marketers that do marketing. People say that I'm on the dark side.
Aaron: When people talk to you about being on the sales side, is that even the darker side of the moon?
Josh: I think so. But I try to make it fun, consultative, and not be that sales guy nobody wants to talk to.
Aaron: Protocol 80 focuses on manufacturing and industrial B2B, right?
Josh: Yep. About 90 to 95% of our business is in the manufacturing space, and it's been that way basically since the agency's inception in 2002.
Aaron: As a diamond partner with HubSpot, you must have dozens of clients engaged with you on the platform.
Josh: More than dozens, yeah. We've been partners for 11 years now. We've seen a lot of different scenarios. All of our marketing clients use HubSpot themselves, or we use it for them, depending on the setup.
Aaron: Tell us a bit more about your background.
Josh: I've been at Protocol 80 since 2008, but prior to that, I was at a large SEO/PPC agency in Pittsburgh called Impact that primarily focused on Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. My day-to-day client was a Fortune 100 financial services account. It was a great learning experience. SEO and PPC were much different back in the mid-2000s, but I learned a lot. When I joined Protocol 80, which started in web dev and custom development, people were asking for SEO and PPC to get found, not just build a site.
Aaron: Did Impact get acquired?
Josh: Impact was acquired by Merkle, who is still around.
Aaron: With SEO changing so much, do you feel like their world is now all AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
Josh: Following best practices hasn't completely changed. If you evolve slowly over time, the changes feel less major. But if I look back at the work I did in the early agency days versus today, it's so much different. Back then, people's brains manually wrote all the surface-level stuff like page titles and meta descriptions. Now AI tools help us write those.
Aaron: Exactly the same for us. We've had internal debates on whether SEO is just AEO now. Back in the day, you could write sub-par content and still rank. Today, the content has to be spectacular to get traffic.
Josh: Exactly. It has to be beyond that surface-level stuff that AI can just answer for someone. It's definitely more complex now.
[Hot Takes Section]
Aaron: Let's jump into a segment my team calls Hot Takes. I'll throw out a statement, and you give your rapid-fire reaction. First one: "Nothing is better than email marketing."
Josh: Oh gosh, so many things are better than email marketing. I almost never open them and don't like receiving them. They're only okay if done strategically, well-personalized, and relevant.
Aaron: When you follow up with prospects, do you lean more on email or phone calls?
Josh: Almost all email.
Aaron: Do you use automation for sales follow-ups?
Josh: For early-stage prospecting, yes, a little. But once I'm working an actual deal with someone, almost no automation.
Aaron: Next one: "PDFs are forever."
Josh: I'll agree with that until everyone can agree on one single-source system that everyone can view without challenges.
Aaron: What about PDF content offer downloads?
Josh: I'm going to say no to content offer PDFs long-term. Information will require more dynamic engagement than just downloading a document. PDFs are still needed today, but they aren't forever—except maybe for static snapshots like contracts.
Aaron: Next: "The future of search is asking, not searching."
Josh: I agree. Back when Ask Jeeves came out, you asked in natural language, but the tech wasn't ready. Now, natural language processing gives great results. You don't just type "Good neighborhoods in Chicago"—you give the AI your whole profile, budget, and criteria, and ask it to analyze options.
Josh: I'm excited for search platforms to understand overall personal context. If I ask about moving to Chicago, I want an AI agent to say, "Based on what I know about you, Chicago isn't the right fit; look here instead."
Aaron: I've been building custom AI agents lately and giving them distinct personalities to challenge me rather than just agree.
Josh: I demoed a Customer Agent the other day and instructed it to end every response with a dad joke. It did, and it was terrible, but it worked!
Aaron: Next one: "Every marketer should learn sales."
Josh: Yes, 100%. Especially in complex spaces like manufacturing, it's so much easier when you understand the seat of the buyer rather than creating pure top-of-funnel marketing. There's often too much disconnect between what sellers need, what buyers want, and what marketers produce.
Aaron: Next: "The company blog is making a comeback."
Josh: As a traditional blog, probably not. As a strategic resource center, company resources haven't gone away.
Aaron: Next: "Businesses that build strong communities will outperform those that just create content."
Josh: I agree, though building community in manufacturing supply chains is much harder than in SaaS or healthcare. Also, companies have to accept that they can't fully control a community once it's built.
Aaron: Last Hot Take: "Nobody wants another newsletter."
Josh: Agree. We're bombarded. I sign up for newsletters and almost never open them because they lack personalization. However, a highly tailored, client-only newsletter updating them on industry changes or platform updates is extremely valuable.
Aaron: "Will AI content make human creativity more or less valuable?"
Josh: Human creativity becomes more valuable. You can spot pure AI-generated content from a mile away—like local restaurants posting generic AI menu graphics on Facebook. Human-driven content provides differentiation, empathy, and accuracy that AI currently can't match.
[Unbound & CRM Adoption Session]
Aaron: Let's pivot back to the Unbound conference happening mid-September in Boston. What are you most excited about this year?
Josh: Aside from being a speaker, I'm excited to get back to Boston and connect with peers and recognizable faces I've made friends with over the past decade-plus.
Aaron: You've been attending since 2010 or 2011, back when it was the Inbound Marketing Summit. How do you feel about HubSpot rebranding Inbound to Unbound?
Josh: I still catch myself calling it Inbound! But I get the rebrand. The conference hasn't been purely about inbound marketing for five or six years now. It covers sales, RevOps, service, and executive strategy.
Aaron: Inbound felt like a universal concept for creating a magnetic brand, but I understand they wanted to reflect the entire customer lifecycle. Now, let's talk about your session: Fix CRM Adoption: A Blueprint for Complex Sales Teams. What key takeaways are you bringing to the stage?
Josh: I'm providing a blueprint with tactical action items for complex sales teams. The two biggest missing pieces in most CRM deployments are measurement and accountability. Anyone can build or configure a CRM—even AI can do basic setup now. But teams fail because managers don't measure usage or hold reps accountable. It's easy to blame the software, but adoption failure is usually an accountability problem.
Aaron: For teams on HubSpot Professional vs. Enterprise, can reps and managers still get meaningful attribution and reporting to enforce that accountability without buying Enterprise?
Josh: Yes, depending on the level of detail required. On Pro, you can still track high-level source attribution and influence revenue. However, without multi-touch attribution (which requires Enterprise), top-of-funnel marketing activities don't always get full credit for long sales cycles. But as long as sales and marketing have a solid alignment process—making sure all key contacts are properly associated with deals—Pro level tools give you plenty of data to see what's working.
Aaron: What are your expectations regarding how AI will be featured at Unbound this year?
Josh: Two years ago, AI announcements like Breeze were high-level. Last year, features matured and got memory. This year, I expect to see deeper execution—how people are using headless CRMs, CLI, and custom APIs to connect models like Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI directly to HubSpot data.
Aaron: We have clients connecting Claude to HubSpot, but if the underlying CRM data is messy or missing basic fields, AI output will just multiply those errors.
Josh: Exactly. Take HubSpot's Smart Deal Progression features—they rely on historical call logs and notes to recommend next steps. If sales reps aren't consistently logging their calls, the AI lacks the context to be accurate. CRM adoption and clean data logging are prerequisites for AI features to actually work.
Aaron: What is your favorite part of the conference experience overall?
Josh: The organic networking. Talking to agency peers and end-user attendees in the halls, doing "Brain Dates," sharing real operational struggles, and getting direct perspectives from different industries. And, of course, the food trucks outside the venue!
Aaron: Josh, this has been a fantastic conversation and preview of your upcoming Unbound session. Where can people find you?
Josh: You can find me on LinkedIn (Josh Curcio) or at Protocol 80. Check out the session schedule on the Unbound website!
Aaron: Thanks for joining us today on Sound of Inbound!
Josh: Thank you for having me, Aaron. This was a blast!
