The Value Path - Jan 21, 2026

[00:04] **Introduction** Joshua Oakes: What's up world? It's Rob, the mayor of Inbound and I'm here with three/4 depending on when he is summoned of my best friends in the whole world. Joshua Oakes: On Wednesdays, we wear orange and on Fridays, uh we move to Wednesday. Joshua Oakes: You might have seen us on Friday. By the way, we need a new theme song, so I'm on that. I'm actually jotting that down now is a uh something I owe from this. Casey Hawkins: I'm sad. Joshua Oakes: Action item from this call. Joshua Oakes: Every Friday at 3:00, come and join us as we help you with HubSpot and now we got to change that. So that's a bit of bad news to start off the day, but we're here Wednesdays at 10:00. George B. Thomas: Good luck rhyming with Wednesday. Joshua Oakes: Hey, hey, every Wednesday at 10:00, come on and hop in as we tell you with Hubspot. George B. Thomas: Hey, there we go. Casey Hawkins: He's a professional. George B. Thomas: He is. I should have never doubted him. Joshua Oakes: As my father uh used to tell me all the time, they don't pay me nothing for nothing. Joshua Oakes: So I will uh I will soonify that and probably lay down a vocal track. How we feeling on this Wednesday? Casey Hawkins: Uh I'm feeling good. It is very cold in I guess I'm mid-Atlantic. Casey Hawkins: Um, and it's supposed to snow like a ton this weekend. I got stressed out and already started grocery shopping, so the food that I bought is going to go bad probably before the snow comes. Joshua Oakes: Yeah. Casey Hawkins: I did already panic. Kyle Jepson: Here in Boston, we got snow this last weekend, but our our forecast for Saturday, Sunday, the highs are in the teens. Kyle Jepson: [inaudible] Joshua Oakes: Yeah, we we have received the winter storm uh warning, which I'm in the south and it's supposed to clip us, but it's supposed to be beyond devastating. And uh as I don't I'm always caught in between panic, uh prep shopping, you know, going and buying all the toilet paper and water and all of that versus there's bad weather all the time. It'll be fun. So as of right now, we're prepared to survive for about 30 minutes if in fact the weather does come in and trap us. Ryan Ginsberg: Today my wife was going to go grocery shopping, but today we're also getting a new roof on. Ryan Ginsberg: And when she went to leave, uh our front door has like netting and tarps and stuff we cannot leave our house. We are trapped inside for the duration of the roofing project. Ryan Ginsberg: And uh so hopefully we don't need food. George B. Thomas: Well, you you guys will be all right. It's funny uh Rob, not that this has anything to do with HubSpot. George B. Thomas: Um, but when we moved down to North Carolina, uh from Ohio, we're used to snow, we're used to cold weather, we're used to like motor around. George B. Thomas: And uh they got their first like two-inch flurry snowstorm in like the first like five years ever of us being here. George B. Thomas: And one of the things that uh a neighbor shared with us and I don't know if you guys have ever Google this or search this on YouTube, uh bread and milk. George B. Thomas: Have you guys seen the bread and milk video? George B. Thomas: Um, I'm telling you it's worth your time just search uh South, down South, got to get the bread and milk and watch the video because that's about to happen all sorts of down here in the next couple days. It is I'm just going to hunker down on my house and let everybody do what humans do. Ryan Ginsberg: It when it's funny for us. Yeah, it is uh learning more, we'll get to Hubspot in a minute, but it's learning more maybe you'll be able to help even more people. Joshua Oakes: This is the weather segment of the. Joshua Oakes: Yeah, this is we help you with Hubspot, we help you with weather forecasting, we help you with pipeline forecasting. We help you with all kinds of stuff. So uh indulge us for a moment, let us talk about the nuclear uh winter apocalypse that is apparently being foretold by meteorologists across the country. Joshua Oakes: Go ahead. Ryan Ginsberg: Yeah, well when I first moved to Boston in in I moved here in 2013, I think it was uh like winter 2014 into 2015, Boston broke all kinds of records for snow. We got over 100 inches of snow and it kind of all fell in the month of February. We were getting like three feet at a time every weekend. Ryan Ginsberg: And uh and the the there was no place to plow it, right? The and there weren't enough plows to plow it. And there was the uh the there was like a press conference with the mayor of Boston. He was the guy his name Marty Walsh, so May Marty is on there answering questions and people are like, why, why aren't you why aren't why aren't you plying this snow? Do your job. And he's like, look, we're not Buffalo, we're not used to this kind of snow. And it made me realize like everything is relative. This thing that was catastrophic in Boston in Buffalo it's just like a a Thursday in November, right? Like and similarly George like two inches of snow like some places they just shut down, right? Because they've never seen it before and they have no idea how to drive in it and yeah. George B. Thomas: Yeah, they they they did shut down Charlotte Kyle, which is hilarious that you bring that up because my son was actually, this is this is the dumbest story ever. George B. Thomas: My son was going to college at Johnson and Wales, which is a culinary Arts School. If you know anything about the culinary arts, they have all the foods. George B. Thomas: Um, and he called us, which we were like a 35-minute drive normally when it's not two inches of like, oh my god, I'm going to die snow. George B. Thomas: I didn't think that by the way, I grew up in snow. George B. Thomas: And he called me, he said, Dad, Dad, they're shutting down the college and they're rationing the food. And I'm like, I'll I'll come get you. George B. Thomas: I I thank God, I go to get him. There's people are in ditches, there's trucks jack knifed. I'm like, what is the where did we move to? I got back and just started to tell my wife like, I don't even know where we moved to. These people are crazy. Nobody can drive in the snow. Only to find out later that nobody can drive in the rain either. Anyway, let's talk about HubSpot. Joshua Oakes: You were really excellent Rob Jones transition here. Joshua Oakes: Speaking of nobody can drive, uh that sometimes can apply to results as well when trying to get people to adopt the orange CRM. George, kick it over to you for a special monologue here to open us up. George B. Thomas: Um, what what am I doing? Joshua Oakes: Man it was an alley ooop. Joshua Oakes: [inaudible] George B. Thomas: Yeah, what What what am I talking about? Joshua Oakes: Yeah, we call that an alley ooop. Joshua Oakes: Um, our fearless leader who is not on camera right now, Mr. Carolyn. Joshua Oakes: There he is. Joshua Oakes: He's he's always just standing by the guy. Joshua Oakes: Yeah. Joshua Oakes: He wanted us to dive into a couple of recurring things. I don't know if you want us to start that now if you had some stuff uh prepped as far as like structure, format or if you had any um, let's call them announces to the format, to the switch to Wednesday. I feel like people might want to hear a minute of that first and then dive into some of the you know, you had CRM object of the week. I think that would be a great one to get opinions on. What Kyle learned at the hug, which is great. I saw a couple of posts Kyle about that asking people about what they wanted to contribute. And a couple of other things that we will keep as a surprise the KC Casum, we'll use that as a trailer or teaser for next. But Chris, if you want to. Casey Hawkins: Casey Casum. Joshua Oakes: There you go. Joshua Oakes: If you want to, if you want to lead us into uh not into temptation, but into salvation from CRM issues. Go ahead. Chris Carolan: Uh, I think you nailed it and that's why you're the host. Um, I I think it's good idea to maybe list all five and or talk about some other possible segments. Maybe we get some feedback from the audience on on things that they might want to see. Chris Carolan: I think personally that what uh what Kyle learned from the hug uh is a no-brainer, but definitely open to um what what people want to learn more about in this format. Joshua Oakes: Absolutely. Joshua Oakes: Yeah, I'll I'll start and uh people can interrupt me at will, but the the move to to today, uh first of all we wear orange on Wednesdays. Joshua Oakes: I have the glasses on from Friday. I think the major driving factor was twofold for that one. We wanted people to be more consistent and uh I'm not saying any names but it might rhyme with Kyle Jepson to be here. Joshua Oakes: Oh. Joshua Oakes: Shot's fired. Joshua Oakes: Um we can't we can't do Hubspot content without Mr. Jepson. That is nothing but the biggest of compliments that could possibly be given to you. So that was part of it. Also, Friday at 2:00 or Friday at 3:00 as the song says is people are, let's be honest, George is halfway to a to a uh cigar and you know, cough whatever special coffee he has. Joshua Oakes: So we want to be more engaged with the audience. We want people to watch, to come and comment. Joshua Oakes: Even the uh the call in type of format, right? Has not worked as well, which is fine, it's not 1995 and this isn't Sports Radio. Joshua Oakes: However, leaving a voicemail or possibly getting into the show, Chris is the producer. If you have a comment that maybe you forgot to leave a voicemail, Chris posted the wrong phone number again or you know, you're seeing this for the first time and want to participate live, I'm open to bringing someone in and letting them give more context on the call. Joshua Oakes: I think that's a great way to engage and you know, some notables Nico, Jeremy Byers, whoever if you're here Trisha, if you want to come join. I know we've done that once or twice. Casey Hawkins: Addison. Joshua Oakes: Yeah. Joshua Oakes: So shout outs to everybody. Go ahead, Casey. Casey Hawkins: I think Addison left a voicemail. Casey Hawkins: So Addison comment. Casey Hawkins: Comment yes if you want to join us live and I'll send you the link. Joshua Oakes: There you go. Joshua Oakes: See, already making some huge strides and improvements there. Uh the time again, the the day and time is just so people are more aware so it's more out there and so that we can get more involvement specifically on either live interactions or voice mail. I think I still think the voice mails are a great idea. Joshua Oakes: Um, and I'm a huge radio guy so I I like the call in feature. The other stuff with format and structure, um, similar to the engagement piece, if we are answering questions or or searching Reddit or searching areas that are not top of mind, maybe like the admin hog yesterday or maybe something with what Chris listed as CRM object of the week. Uh, your weekly Breeze AI PSA, what was unboxed, updated the week. Things like that that are current. If this serves as an aggregate or conglomerate for uh a lot of, I mean, most of you are on other shows. I know that is one of the themes. Chris is on air, you know, for 10 hours a day it seems. But coming to that doesn't that shouldn't preclude the fact that we want to provide as much value as we can in this hour. Joshua Oakes: So if it's just an aggregate of the best features or stuff that needs to be discussed at further length if that's the right way to say that. I wasn't an English major. Uh, but that's for me what we're intending to do with the pivot. George B. Thomas: Which by the way, before you move on to the next thing Rob, by a show of hands, meaning leave a comment, yes me, if you're watching this live or later, um, do you have Breeze assistant app downloaded to your phone. Yes me, no me, put it in the comments. I'm super curious since you just mentioned Breeze, Mr. Rob Jones. Joshua Oakes: Yes. Joshua Oakes: I uh I my kids watch enough YouTube that I'm resigned to the fact that I will be one of those uh every five minutes CTA comment, you know, jump in the chat, join the join the stream. Joshua Oakes: I'll be one of those dudes. I've seen enough examples from, you know, millennials and and younger people whatever they're called that uh that I am able to do it probably not as good, but I'll get better. Um, the third thing is I was going to let everyone else give kind of their reason and then we'll jump into CRM object of the potential benefits and what we hope to get from this. I off camera and in these kind of do we need to move this, how do we make the show more impactful sessions. I've listed being here, hosting, adding humor, adding some psychology background, Addison's in the lobby. So shout out to everybody on this call. It's already working by the way. Um, uh, so we can push that or we can give one sentence as to what we're hoping to give versus get from kind of switching the format up a little bit, little more structure different time. I'll start with the person that looks most eager to speak Casey Greyhound of the hotline Hawkins. Casey Hawkins: Scare trying to look least eager. Casey Hawkins: Um, I am hoping to solve more problems. I think and I'm curious how that will look. Um, but I think we kind of have gotten in a trap a couple of times where we didn't have enough context. Um, so that's why I recruited Addison to come in. um, because I think a lot of times we can solve the problem with some extra context. So I'm excited to just solve complete problems. Joshua Oakes: Love it. Joshua Oakes: Kyle, other than launching your uh mayoral campaign for the city of Boston, what are you hoping to give/get out of this time and format change? Kyle Jepson: Uh yeah, so I don't know if anyone watching noticed but last week I put a a LinkedIn post out just saying, all right, give it to me straight. What are the problems with Hubspot? Kyle Jepson: Um, that has gotten 354 comments. Kyle Jepson: And it is spreading like wildfire through Hubspot's product team. It was a leader on our product team who asked me to crowd source some feedback. We we had no expectation that it would take off in such a way and we are frantically using AI to try to quantify and categorize and organize these tests. and it is resulting in real action items to teams. Uh these are this feedback is going to uh to make change in Hubspot. We are really focused on on gaps and inconsistencies and and quality of life sorts of updates right now. Um and in general, the the product team is starting to look to me as the guy who can bring them the real customer feedback and I am trying to find ways to do that. and I feel like a show like this could be an excellent place, right? Like hopefully people will come and have a Hubspot question and the the smart people in the room will answer and problem solve like Casey was just describing. Uh but me, uh if there's ever a moment where the answer is, yeah, that's actually just how Hubspot works. Kyle Jepson: Now is an opportunity for me to take that back to the product team and say, hey look, people don't like this. they they have this idea of how it could be better. What can we do? And so, um, uh most people are here magnanimously trying to give. I am here just to take. I want to take your feedback, I want to take your complaints, I want to take your ideas and I want to to put them in front of the product team. Joshua Oakes: Love that. Uh George, I'll transition to you with I think Damesh referenced that recently and I forgot how he said it, but I think you referenced it's not death by a thousand cuts, it's improvement by a thousand smiles. So we want to improve the quality of life in a ton of other areas to make the overall experience better. Over to you now, George after that Damesh quote. George B. Thomas: Yeah, thanks for that uh Damesh quote. That maybe that's a a weekly segment uh out of the mouth of Damesh. Uh there could be a screen that flies in and uh maybe use the puppet Damesh for that screenshot as well. That would be cool, call back uh from Inbound years ago. Uh listen, here's the thing too, like I just want to say the power of a Kyle Jepson post. Bam, like we're changing Hubspot. Like let's just say that too. George B. Thomas: Um, it's funny because I'm coming here as a teacher, but honestly the thing that I want most out of this show in particular is to learn. George B. Thomas: What I mean by that is I get to see certain ways that I'm using Hubspot or teaching people how to use Hubspot. And I get to see some ways of how people come to me with their Hubspot. Um, but Hubspot is so customizable at this point. There are people doing things that I'm like, wow, you're really pushing the envelope. And so like getting on those edge cases of people pushing the envelope, therefore breaking or finding places where they can't do things with Hubspot and learning about those to then be able to like put a layer on top of it and be like, well, if you did this or if you you might hack it. So I'm I'm eager to learn and teach while I'm learning about these kind of different scenarios inside of Hubspot portals. Joshua Oakes: Love that. And uh speaking of scenarios inside of Hubspot portals that need solving, I believe you have somebody ready to join the call, Addison. Chris, if you want to. [01:18:04] **Discussion with Addison about Deal Stages** [01:18:04] **Addison: Issue of Pipeline Conversion and Close Losses** [01:18:05] **George: Possibility of Adding a Close-Nurture State to Deal Stage** [01:18:06] **Casey: Suggestion of Using the Close-Loss Reason Property** Addison: Hello. Joshua Oakes: There we go. Addison, how are you? Welcome to the Hubspot hotline. You know everybody on here. I'm sure I'm Rob. Addison: Hi. Joshua Oakes: I usually wear an orange suit but I I only had the glasses today. How can we help you today? Addison: I'm in my tan, almost orange for for the occasion. Um, thank you. Yeah, thank you for welcoming me in. I've had uh experience working with Casey. She is an absolute knight in shining armor for us as we try and navigate just this really great tool that's at our at our disposal. Um, a little bit of background on us. We are a Govtech company. We sell into municipalities, which has been an interesting paradigm um in sales because yes doesn't always translate into yes right now. There's a whole different sales cycle within the sales cycle that we're trying to participate in and gain insights from. Addison: Um, so all that to say it's you don't always get a no. You get a a not now or a next year. And I'm trying to figure out, well how do we get a in a grasp on how much of our pipeline is converting to closed wins when or versus, you know, closed loss and what should we consider closed loss in this cycle where it maybe would fall back into a nurture stage. So maybe I've looked at, okay, well can we categorize a slip whereas maybe we were at a high pipeline stage and then we didn't get funding or but it didn't make it in the budget. They're like, we're so sorry but another priority got pushed. We want this, we're still talking to you. It's just going to be a next year. Addison: Um, wondering if you guys have had experience working with uh deal stages in this regard and if you had any recommendations on how to appropriately pull insights on this type of level. George B. Thomas: Addison, can I just tell you that you actually just uh punched my cranium with what you said. And I thought of something that I've never thought of before, but I'm like, man, I actually want to chase this down in my brain and see if it makes sense or if I'm just being an idiot. Um, but you mentioned things that every sales team across the entire world say, closed lost or closed one. George B. Thomas: Here's what's interesting. There's nothing stopping us in HubSpot to create a closed nurture stage. Now, imagine if the instead of like closed loss because quit contacting me, it was like, hey, not yet and it was like a closed nurture stage because then you would still have deals that are in that nurture stage, which you would then have a revenue amount of dollars saying, hey, we have this amount of dollars in a nurture stage that we have them in a now marketing slow drip where we're emailing them once a month, once a quarter, um, and and we set a date because we put a date property of like a follow-up date and and actually 30 days before that follow-up date, we do go weekly. So like my brain goes to like what if there was a property, what if there was a flow and what if there was just a stage where it could stay there and not everybody like freak out that it has to be like, well we can't sell them. So like get it out of my view. Okay, well it's considered closed, but it's in that stage. George B. Thomas: Anyway, I I don't know, what are you guys's thoughts? Joshua Oakes: Casey, if you want to let me go first since you Addison mentioned she'd already been working with you. I immediately thought like had a similar thought George. It was similar it was uh closed nurture or like latent pipe. And the comparison for me when I was uh more involved in sales was sports teams, right? It's not Govtech, but there's a very seasonal element to where they do. I mean, I think NBA NFL, the bigger, you know, larger teams, they have an entire season and then all their buying decisions changes, whatever much like the players, but with the equipment or the the tech behind it was made in a, you know, one to two, sometimes two and a half, three month window. And so if that's the if that's your seasonal window or it's kind of the latent pipeline that's that is not no, but not now for decent reasons, that's just when decisions are made, there would be a way to kind of appropriately label and tag that so you're not disqualifying or um, you know, close losting pipeline that actually could come to fruition, but you're also doing something that provides a strong business case and providing value to them while they're latent. I think is latent the right word? Am I using that word completely incorrectly or is latent, is that a word? Feel like it is. Joshua Oakes: I need to read more dictionaries. Casey, I'll go to you as I recover from that awkward moment. Casey Hawkins: Um, so I have the advantage of being in Addison's portal. So I can add some like low hanging fruit opportunities to this. Um, first and foremost, um, there is a closed loss reason property that comes out of the box in Hubspot and 0% of your deals have close lost reason. Casey Hawkins: You should go. Casey Hawkins: So I think that might be one way we can like very quickly start recognizing the patterns. And even going further into that, um, oftentimes we'll set up close lost reasons as like a dropdown. Um, so we'll look at rather than right now out of the box it comes as an open text field and oftentimes we keep that open text field to capture like the nuances. Um, but we could pretty quickly like today, um, add a dropdown select of common close loss reasons, one of those being like bad timing is how it's traditionally framed. Um, and then from there we can segment, um, we can create follow up tasks. We can do a lot of the stuff George was talking about even just from like that. Not to say that in your use case or in many use cases is having a separate close loss nurture isn't a valuable addition as well. But. Addison: If we do it like that, would I lose the current data stream from that active deal? Casey Hawkins: Um Chris has. Joshua Oakes: You didn't even play the music. Joshua Oakes: Oh my gosh. Joshua Oakes: Please me. He to tag me in at the end and he's he was too, he's losing it. Chris Carolan: Like the word that she says active deal, right? And like so it's very likely that closed, that word does not make sense and that's often why stuff like close lost reason doesn't get filled out because I got to close it because some report tells me I got to or some view I want to get it out of my sight. Chris Carolan: When I first joined uh like consulting in software coming from manufacturing where there was things like government sales cycles and every kind of sales cycle was like not two months, which is what everybody in SAS will tell you it's supposed to be. And if you're not going to close in two months, then you get that deal out of there even though it's a great fit, it's still an opportunity and they've been very clear as to why they can't buy right now, but they trust you and the value has been shown, but the budget cycle is in September, right? for for government or the the cycles are a year or two years. So can we just build pipelines that make sense for our sales process. And an example I used to use and this is ambiguous language starts to freak everybody out. But if you can define the stages and everybody agrees on what they mean so that we're all looking at the same words and understanding them, like a holding pattern stage right after a value proven stage where they're in. They just for whatever reason, they cannot move forward right now, but there is no uh there's no actual like chosen competitor or like chosen status quo or like direct reason that they give you that this is no longer an opportunity, it should not move to close lost in my opinion. So making the space for and maybe this is a different pipeline, right? That's needed, right? Often those are underutilized. Chris Carolan: But just really aligning on the language that the team can understand uh so that the data does, you know, get maintained in a proper way, right? George B. Thomas: Chris, I love where you're headed as far as like the maybe the problem is just the words that we're using. I I also love that Noel, one of the viewers says, rocking an on-hold stage in pipe because sometimes people ain't red, well he didn't say ain't, that's me. Ready right now, right? Um, so I think all of this is good stuff. Casey, I even love the idea of like, well maybe it doesn't have to be a stage. It could be a stage, but even you were like, hey, we've got this thing and if we use this thing, we could filter down to this thing and then I could probably build a report off of this thing. So like if the idea is, I just want to know the revenue amount that's sitting out there, the potential. I think there's like now four different ways that we said we might be able to do it in Hubspot. George B. Thomas: Does any of that like resonate. Joshua Oakes: But not yet developed or manifest. Joshua Oakes: So I was right. I the only other thing and this this is uh not necessarily a shameless plug, but you Casey did you said that you had been in her portal and that none of the close loss deals had reason. Like sometimes the lack of data is a presence of behavioral data. So if you don't have the reason filled out, you know that people aren't doing it, I would argue that you don't have enough data to like that you have data in that people aren't following whatever established, you know, process or rule set you have, that would have like the mindset and those behaviors would have to change first so that you can, you know, make a more informed decision on the change. Joshua Oakes: What Addison, what's the team doing right now? Are they just leaving the deals open? Addison: Yeah, so we leave it open. Um, we keep it in our cadence and we're finding that you know, sometimes especially as we're growing and more deals are are adding on that we're some of these stages are hitting quite a few deals within them. I like what Chris mentioned about possibly two separate pipelines and maybe there's because we do kind of talk internally about how there's there's two sales cycles. There's the the sales cycle that we can control, which is essentially closing out when we get our internal champion. When we have somebody on the municipality front that says, yes, I'm going to bring it forward. And then maybe at that point we consider like close one champion moved it into maybe a procurement pipeline. And that's where we can get a little bit more granular and like, well does this need to go to council? Has this hit different approvals? And that might be a good way of delineating, okay, what's our what's our controllable pipeline and what is our supportive pipeline and help us forecasting um more I guess with a little bit more of a razor edge. Um, I think that's an interesting approach that we could potentially build out within our our data sphere. George B. Thomas: Addison, I love all the words that you're using right now. all of them. Just saying. Chris Carolan: Um, advise caution on creating two separate deal pipelines that represent the same opportunity. Uh, so I like to think about deals. And this is where if you can get here with your team and like in terms of governance and language like deals in Hubspot are built for sales management, right? If the team activity or process or customer process that we need to track is not sales management, we cannot use deals for it. right? We got all these other objects in Hubspot now and so an example like, you know, tickets or anything from the object library like listings. I like to use them in creative ways without needing custom objects to say, okay, the sales opportunity is still represented by this deal pipeline, but between closed one or activated as I like to call it, uh and like um like the champion situation where there's a purchase there's an in-depth purchasing like conversation that needs to be run. That can be because sometimes it's not even the same people like involved. It's all of a sudden our finance teams are talking to each other and we can't have them coming in to do stuff in the deal because then it gets messy and it gets sales versus the world, right? So you create this separate object that goes alongside that the other team can own. Um, and then they get their job done and you you can sync up the pipelines based on fields. And that's it it looks more complex at first, but it's because it's a complex scenario that we need to support and if we can separate out the data sets like that, now all of a sudden everything starts to look clean and make sense and it's now reportable, right? And that's going to lead to teams using it and filling out the properties and it's uh a good cycle in there. Addison: Thank you. Kyle Jepson: Kyle, are you taking all of this for the uh product team. I'm hoping there was a there was a product blocker in here that I'm aware of, but I just want to make sure you're. Kyle Jepson: No, but it's just it's just fascinating that we've had this whole long conversation. We have not once talked about leads. I think that is indicative of many things. Kyle Jepson: Feedback for the product team. Casey Hawkins: Well. Casey Hawkins: Do we have another voicemail? George B. Thomas: Well before you go there because Kyle brought up leads. George B. Thomas: Kyle, one of the most joyous days in my life in the last like 365 days was when the HubSpot update came up that I could actually help people turn leads off in their portal if they weren't using them. Kyle Jepson: Sure. George B. Thomas: Just saying. Kyle Jepson: Yeah. Kyle Jepson: And I I do think in some ways the writing is kind of on the wall in that way. That's why I'm not like here advocating for the leads object. I just take this as one more proof that leads is not the solution any of you jump to first, right? And Addison, it sounds like you're uh really doing fine with deals. You don't need some other place to track this like starting from scratch, right? Um I think this question of what happens when a deal pauses but has real potential for the future has always been a thorny one. Um, our hope from a reporting perspective is that those deals will be somehow removed from the the active pipeline so that when you look at your pipeline, you can report and forecast accurately. and also your sales people can look and see these are the deals I need to actively work on. Um, I like Patty's note in the in the chat Addison. I don't know if you can see it. Close loss doesn't need to mean lost forever. It could be lost for now. We use the close lost reason and details to keep track of and keep line of sight to those deals that have an option of bubbling up in the future. Keep it simple. Kyle Jepson: So I think some combination of what people have been saying, having a place for it to go whether that's a different close stage, close nurture or whether it's just close loss and now we pull them into some sort of nurturing flow or we have a close loss reason or we have some other properties we're using. Um, I think as long as you are able to get the information out of the pipeline you need from a reporting perspective and your sales people are able to look at the pipeline and know what they need to do and you don't lose track of those deals that need to pause for a bit, then whatever you do is fine. I don't I don't think Hubspot has a specific prescription for that. But this leads object did was built with kind of the the recognition that it often takes several cycles before a deal gets to closed one, right? Like it is it is often the case either in early outreach or during later you know, consultative negotiations, uh that it's like, okay, we're going to come back to this in six or 12 months. Um, and you don't want deals like that just cluttering up your pipeline and making it harder to see the ones that need action today. So. George B. Thomas