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How to Get the Most Out of HubSpot's AI [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 188]
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At a Glance
How do you get the most out of HubSpot's AI features?
To get the most out of HubSpot’s AI features, give Breeze the right context about your business and be selective about which AI tools you use. Start by filling in the Context tab in Agent Hub with who your customers are, how you sell, and who you’re a good fit for, so every agent works from accurate information. Then point AI agents at repetitive work or the tasks your team enjoys least.
HubSpot’s own research found that only a small share of companies using AI see a real return, so the goal is to use AI in the right places, not in every place.
Who This Episode Is For
- HubSpot customers who see new AI features in their portal every month and don't know which ones to turn on first
- Marketing leaders deciding whether Campaign Agent or Nurture Agent is worth a test
- Business owners who've started using AI and aren't sure it's helping
- Teams already connecting ChatGPT or Claude to HubSpot and wondering where Breeze fits
View the full transcription of this episode.
This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.
[00:00:00] Bob Ruffolo: With all the AI features being added to HubSpot, like Agent Hub, where should you actually start? Kyle Jepson from the HubSpot Academy spends his days helping people make sense of those updates. His advice is to start by making sure HubSpot understands your business, your customers, and how you sell. So how do you give that context and use it to create better campaigns and follow-ups?
[00:00:19] Bob Ruffolo: Well, that's exactly what Kyle and I are going to talk about on today's episode, which was filmed on site at Endless Customers Live. Let's get into it
[00:01:09] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast live from Endless Customers Live, and we have a great guest today. You know him. If you're in the HubSpot community, it's very hard to not know who this man is.
[00:01:23] Bob Ruffolo: Kyle Jepson, the, the face of the HubSpot Academy. Welcome to the episode.
[00:01:28] Kyle Jepson: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:29] Bob Ruffolo: And thank you so much for being part of our conference all these years. Uh, our audience loves you. They geek out over all your stuff, and it's an honor having you at these events.
[00:01:39] Kyle Jepson: it's, it's a privilege to be here. It's a ... I mean, I like to say that everywhere in the HubSpot ecosystem, they're just really nice people. I've never been to a HubSpot-related event and run into a person I didn't like. But here especially, the enthusiasm and the energy is just so high.
[00:01:53] Kyle Jepson: It's a great place to be
[00:01:54] Bob Ruffolo: I really appreciate that. And, uh, obviously Impact and, and HubSpot, we've been like this for, for 15 [00:02:00] years, so it's been a great ride.
[00:02:01] Bob Ruffolo: Now, Kyle, what's really cool about having you at these events and now having you on this episode is you are on the forefront of everything that HubSpot's building and testing and rolling out, and you're the first to, to play with it and teach everybody how to use it. Um, we just got back from the Unbound conference as well, and you guys are making a massive shift over at, at HubSpot in terms of, uh, the products and what you've, you've rebuilt, uh, Breeze.
[00:02:27] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Um, give us a high level what's going on at HubSpot. Where's the company going in terms of our product, and what are you seeing in terms of the new features right now that we should all be using?
[00:02:35] Kyle Jepson: Yeah, absolutely. So Unbound was fascinating to me, uh, because as everyone expects in 2026, the keynote addresses were a lot about AI. HubSpot is developing AI features. We have agents.
[00:02:47] Kyle Jepson: Everybody loves to talk about agents, but I thought the tone of Yamini and Duncan's keynotes was unlike anything I've heard. It was not AI hype. It was not more agents for everybody. Yamini talked a [00:03:00] lot about how more AI is not the answer,
[00:03:03] Bob Ruffolo: sh- that was great, and she showed, like, how people are using AI- Yeah
[00:03:06] Bob Ruffolo: and getting worse results.
[00:03:08] Kyle Jepson: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So
[00:03:09] Kyle Jepson: we did this research at HubSpot, and we found out that, uh, of the many, many companies that have implemented AI solutions recently, uh, just a very small percentage are seeing a real impact that's positive from those efforts. Um, but when you look at them, that, that impact is huge, right?
[00:03:28] Kyle Jepson: It's off the charts, and so there, there's a small number of companies that are getting it right when there's a large number of companies that are just trying AI. And, uh, and so HubSpot, who traditionally at our annual event has released hundreds of features, uh, announced I think three, four agents, right?
[00:03:50] Kyle Jepson: It was very focused. It was, it was not just AI spaghetti thrown at the wall. It was, it was a real, a statement of opinion about these [00:04:00] are the places that we think AI can most be featured. So that was the first really interesting thing. That was the obvious interesting thing. Uh, behind the scenes for me as the guy who tells everyone about HubSpot updates, the more interesting thing was we still had hundreds of features released.
[00:04:15] Bob Ruffolo: you always
[00:04:16] Kyle Jepson: we just chose to highlight those ones, and if you look at the couple hundred we released outside of that, a lot of them have nothing to do with AI. We're still focused on, on data structures and ease of use and, and UI updates. We're the same old HubSpot we've always been. We're just finding the strategic places to deploy AI to help our customers grow better.
[00:04:35] Bob Ruffolo: You know, it's funny, we've done other episodes too where we've talked about deterministic and non-deterministic, and AI is non-deterministic, and when you're doing deterministic, you're using automation. You might be using AI for non-deterministic.
[00:04:47] Bob Ruffolo: AI could be very expensive. Yeah. It could make, get loose, it can make things up. It goes rogue. It's thinking and trying to do different things, where automation's like, you know, insert Y and X comes out, right? Yeah. It's very definitive. So I think HubSpot's always [00:05:00] been a great automation company. Right. And we sh- uh, really one of the messages, keep using more automation- Yeah
[00:05:05] Bob Ruffolo: and then supplement it with AI.
[00:05:07] Kyle Jepson: what they are. Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting to me. So we have this thing Agent Hub, where you can, as you might expect, build agents, but it's also we're moving our workflows, uh, functionality into there with this cool new builder.
[00:05:18] Kyle Jepson: Um, and when you're in Agent Hub, there's a Create button, like there is in so many places in HubSpot, and there's a dropdown. Do you wanna create an agent or do you wanna create a workflow? And this deterministic versus non-deterministic differentiation is exactly... It highlights it. There's little help texts- Yeah
[00:05:32] Kyle Jepson: saying, you know, "If, if you have a process that you know needs to work in this exact order every single time, just use a good old-fashioned workflow. Nothing... Don't introduce non-deterministic reasoning into it," right?
[00:05:44] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, 'cause what's gonna happen is 99% of the time it'll do it right, and 1-- that 1% of the time it'll be like, "I think we should try this this time." Right. And it breaks everything.
[00:05:52] Kyle Jepson: Right.
[00:05:52] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. Right. Uh, well, and I mean, yeah. Uh, uh, uh, agents are meant to do things that deterministic workflows can't do, [00:06:00] right? The... I- if there's any sort of analysis required or, or creativity, uh, uh, uh, uh, an if X then Y sort of workflow c- has never been able to do that, right?
[00:06:10] Kyle Jepson: And so I think, I think that's the right way to think about this moment we're in. There are lots of things agents can do, but just 'cause they can do them doesn't mean you, you... We, we don't wanna get into this shiny new tool syndrome where it's like, "Oh, let's use this for everything now," right? Uh, or we're, "We'll use it to update properties or, or to record form submissions."
[00:06:29] Kyle Jepson: Like, no. Why? Why would you do that?
[00:06:31] Bob Ruffolo: And the big thing I took away was the importance of context. Yeah. And having your context in one spot. Now HubSpot has always been great at that because all your sales and marketing data, if you've been using HubSpot for a lot of years like we have, it's all in there.
[00:06:44] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Your transcripts are in there, your call notes, your everything, everyth- Uh, so all your customer data is there, and now you can do so much more with Breeze and, and once you have the context, it actually makes the AI more, work more. Yeah. So how would you, Kyle, uh, [00:07:00] if you're looking at our audience, you, now you know us 'cause you've been at all these events, where are we not using HubSpot appropriately?
[00:07:09] Bob Ruffolo: Like, what tips would you have for, say, I would love to see more of your customers, your audience, people doing Endless Customers, doing more of this inside HubSpot.
[00:07:18] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. Well, I think you, you mentioned context, so we'll
[00:07:20] Kyle Jepson: so we'll start there.
[00:07:21] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:21] Kyle Jepson: Inside
[00:07:22] Kyle Jepson: Agent Hub, there is a, a context section where you can just collect things together, and this to me is really exciting. Even if somebody watching this has no interest in using AI whatsoever, they're morally opposed to it, right? Even for those people, this context page is incredible because for as long as I've been at HubSpot, I've been teaching people, look, your marketing team and your sales team might have a different understanding of who your customer is and what they want, right?
[00:07:44] Kyle Jepson: And if you don't sit down and come to a, a, an, a shared understanding of that, you're gonna have problems, right? Marketing's gonna be giving leads to sales that sales doesn't want. Sales is gonna be promising things that product can't deliver, right? Um, and so I've always said, you need to sit down and have these [00:08:00] conversations and write it down somewhere.
[00:08:01] Kyle Jepson: Where do you write it down? Well, Google Doc. Uh, there, there wasn't a good answer for that, right? This context page is that, right? This is where you say, "This is our customer. This is our value proposition. This is our industry. This is, this is who we're a good fit for. This is who, who we're a bad fit for.
[00:08:17] Kyle Jepson: This is our sales methodology we use," right? There's a place now in your CRM to document that, and if you use AI, hallelujah, the AI's gonna know all that and, and use it, right? But even if you don't, just going through that exercise and documenting it in HubSpot is incredible. Like, that is so big, and I don't think a lot of people are thinking about that at, it that way.
[00:08:37] Kyle Jepson: They're thinking like, "Oh, here's more work I have to do to get AI up and running." And no, there are benefits even if you're not using AI. So for a place to start, I would say context home
[00:08:45] Kyle Jepson: Uh,
[00:08:45] Bob Ruffolo: context- ... a good one ... Context Home. Okay. So, um, where will we find Context Home in HubSpot?
[00:08:52] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. So if, uh, i- if you go to Agent Hub, uh, which if you're using the standard navigation, has its own little node now. [00:09:00] If you have personalized your navigation, 'cause that's a thing now, I'm gonna say just use the search bar at the top and look for Agent Hub. You'll get there. Um- Or Breeze. Or Breeze. Yeah.
[00:09:07] Kyle Jepson: Ask Breeze, "Where's Agent Hub?" Um, and then inside there, there is a tab for context. Um, and, and when you're on that tab, there's just a list of sections down the left-hand side, and, and I would say just go in and fill them all in.
[00:09:20] Bob Ruffolo: Okay, so fill in every blank. Um, you can use your own AI tools that might know about you anyway to say, "Help me fill out this, this, uh, context home, get it right." And then what are some use cases now, um, say we're not opposed to AI- Right ... but we have this in our, our platform. We've got context. What are like three or four things we can do now once Context, uh, Home is, is complete?
[00:09:40] Kyle Jepson: Yeah, sure. Um, so one of the, uh... W- well, let's talk about a couple of new agents, peop- uh, that, that we just released. Uh, one is called Campaign Agent, and so, uh, I hope everybody watching this has played around with Marketing Studio. That's been around for a couple years now. If not, go try it out. It's one of the coolest tools inside of HubSpot, [00:10:00] right?
[00:10:00] Kyle Jepson: Uh, it's like this collaborative, uh, Miro board sort of environment where you can say, yeah, we're gonna have a, a, a ad campaign that leads to a form, and there's gonna be a confirmation email, right? And you can have arrows connecting them and things. And if you are the kind of person who you're, you're a creative marketer and you wanna collaborate and brainstorm, this is great for that.
[00:10:20] Kyle Jepson: Real-time collaboration, visual layout. Um, I'm not that person. If it was my job to run a campaign, I would have no idea where to start. And so that Campaign Agent is for that person, right? Um, you can just open up Breeze and say, "I need a campaign. These are my goals. These are the... You know, we're having a webinar.
[00:10:37] Kyle Jepson: How do I promote this?" And it will build it all in, uh, in the ca- in the Marketing Studio for you, and now you have it all laid out, right? And that's, uh, you, you, you have all... It'll pull on that context, so now it knows who your customers are, it knows what your business is, it knows what you're trying to do,
[00:10:54] Bob Ruffolo: Will it ask you further, like, follow-up questions as well?
[00:10:56] Kyle Jepson: Absolutely,
[00:10:56] Kyle Jepson: questions.
[00:10:57] Kyle Jepson: And it'll ask you follow-up questions. Yeah, I, I mean, especially if you start with a, [00:11:00] a very vague prompt, "Hey, I need help building a campaign," it's gonna say, "Great." What are we doing here, right? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? Whereas if you, you, as part of that process, you can upload documents and things.
[00:11:12] Kyle Jepson: So if you have a well-written brief and you say, "Hey, I just need this turned into HubSpot assets," it may not ask you follow-up questions, right? It may say, "Wow, that's a great brief. Let me build this for you." And so, um, something like that I think is really powerful 'cause if you have the context set up and you have all your HubSpot data, and now you're telling it your goals, it can build this in a really smart way, uh, with a lot of HubSpot's, you know, internal best practices built into that, and that's awesome.
[00:11:39] Kyle Jepson: Um, and like I said, for someone like me who doesn't know how to build a campaign, I, I think that's gonna unlock things that y- you may not have been able to do otherwise. But on the other side, if you are a happy marketer who loves building campaigns, that's what brings you joy, I'm gonna say don't use Campaign, uh, Agent, right?
[00:11:58] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. If that's what you're good at, if [00:12:00] that's what you love doing, man, Marketing Studio's awesome, and you should hop in there and just build it by hand, right? Use agents to automate the stuff you don't like doing,
[00:12:09] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:12:09] Kyle Jepson: makes sense. Um,
[00:12:10] Kyle Jepson: or, or to add, add value in other places. Uh, another agent we launched is called a Nurture Agent, where if you have built a, a, a marketing email and you're gonna send this out to hundreds or thousands of people, um, mark- uh, the, the Nurturing Agent will look at the individual records for these people and create a personalized version of that for them.
[00:12:30] Kyle Jepson: And so this is, this is like a pure unlock, right? Uh, marketers have always wished they could give this sort of individualized attention. Um-
[00:12:37] Bob Ruffolo: No, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive deeper into this one. Yeah, yeah. My fear when we do something like that is that the emails won't sound human. Yeah. Um, it'll pull in weird things off their contacts record.
[00:12:48] Bob Ruffolo: Like, "I saw you viewed this page." Like, that doesn't matter. Like, "You've looked at our privacy pology-" Yeah ... "policy page seven times." Yeah. So, like, how good is that really? Like, what are you guys really seeing in terms of use [00:13:00] cases?
[00:13:00] Kyle Jepson: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Kyle Jepson: I mean, it's, it's very early. Uh, Nurture Agent was announced at, at Unbound. Uh, nobody had seen it before then. It, it then entered a, a, a public beta which as, as of this moment of recording, it's still in public beta. Um, I, uh, I did my Kyle Jepson thing and made a, a social video about it, posted it on LinkedIn.
[00:13:21] Kyle Jepson: Uh, and one guy responded and said, "Yes, I've been using it and I, I saw a 39% increase in email engagement." So that is, that's N equals one. I'm not promising that to everyone who's watching this, but that's really-
[00:13:33] Bob Ruffolo: But we're having some wins early on.
[00:13:35] Kyle Jepson: yeah. We're, we're seeing a promising trend here. Uh, the thing about Nurturing Agent is, uh, you, uh, after you've built a- an email, uh, in the email editor, you're gonna see a button to, like, I forget what it says, optimize with, with Nurture Agent or something.
[00:13:50] Kyle Jepson: And as part of that process, it'll show you your base email, and then if you imagine, uh, like making suggestions in a Google Doc where things are crossed out and replaced and things, it'll give you that [00:14:00] view to see the edits it's accept- suggesting for a specific contact. So you select the contact. What, what would you send this contact to this email?
[00:14:07] Kyle Jepson: And you can see exactly what it's doing. You can tell it, on the left-hand side, you can tell it, "We want you to include, uh, y- you know, uh, reference these properties," right? So to your point, if there's, if there's data in your CRM, you know, uh, the, like, a bullion, is this customer a big fat jerk, right?
[00:14:24] Kyle Jepson: Like don't-
[00:14:25] Kyle Jepson: include that one. Don't give that to Nurture Agent, and then it won't flow in, right? Um, and then I would say, you know, testing is always free in HubSpot. Uh, a lot of the agents consume credits, but the testing side does not. And so if you have an email and you're wondering what Nurture Agent will do, look at it for 5 or 10 or 20 customers, right?
[00:14:44] Kyle Jepson: Whatever it'll take for you to feel confident that it is, that, that is doing it right. Uh, toggle different, uh, properties and other, other data sources on and off and see what it does. One really important thing to know about Nurture Agent is for individual modules in your email, you can lock [00:15:00] them and say, "Nurture Agent, you are not allowed to touch this one," right?
[00:15:03] Kyle Jepson: So if you have some legal approved fine print at the bottom, don't let Nurture Agent get creative with that bit, right? Say, "No, that's off limits," right? But the, the, the greeting, the, the, the text of the CTA, whatever it is, uh, that you might want varied based on, on people's engagement, like, by all means, give that a try.
[00:15:20] Bob Ruffolo: You know, even, even hearing this, like a really simple thing that, uh, now this is all great stuff. If you've been using HubSpot, you're becoming a power user, you wanna start expanding on that. Yeah. Yeah, not even a power user, but you're pretty good with HubSpot. But maybe a really basic thing that I'm hearing, you fill out the context and now your Breeze understands what types of customers you're really going after and what you do really well.
[00:15:43] Bob Ruffolo: Then you can just go to Breeze and say, "What are some missed sales opportunities?" Yeah. "What are some un-" You know, and you don't have to say, "I'm looking for people that look like this, that do this, so we can sell them this service." You, you could skip all that 'cause it's already in the context, and now you can just go right to, "Where are my missed opportunities?"
[00:15:58] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. "
[00:15:59] Bob Ruffolo: Where am I losing [00:16:00] revenue
[00:16:00] Kyle Jepson: Absolutely. Um, and, and on that, you know, I get asked a lot, "Uh, I really like Claude or I really like ChatGPT. W- is Breeze... I can connect them to HubSpot now. Why would I use Breeze?" The, the... Something that's important to know about Breeze is we, it, it doesn't just have access to HubSpot's public documentation.
[00:16:18] Kyle Jepson: It has that, but it also has a lot of internal resources we've given it that includes a lot of HubSpot's opinions and best practices and frameworks and things, right? So if you've heard HubSpot talk about loop marketing, you can go, go ask Breeze, "What is loop marketing?" And it'll tell you. And you, if you say, "How do I implement this in my account?"
[00:16:34] Kyle Jepson: It'll look at your account and tell you what to do first, right?
[00:16:37] Bob Ruffolo: context on top of your context. Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:39] Kyle Jepson: and whereas, you know, uh, ChatGPT and, and Claude, I love Claude. I'm a daily Claude user. Um, I feel like sometimes Claude Opus reasons much better than, than Breeze Assistant. But when I ask it questions about HubSpot, it's just pulling from its training data, and HubSpot moves way too fast for that.
[00:16:57] Kyle Jepson: And so a lot of times, you know, I'll have Claude [00:17:00] hooked up to HubSpot and ask it to do things, and, uh, it'll say, "Oh, yeah, certainly HubSpot has a property called this thing," and it's just kinda guessing. Like, I couldn't find that property. Breeze never does that. Breeze knows what properties you have, and, and it can, can surface them and use them and update them and-
[00:17:15] Bob Ruffolo: and- It's just wired better.
[00:17:16] Kyle Jepson: Yeah.
[00:17:16] Kyle Jepson: It's built for that.
[00:17:17] Bob Ruffolo: Awesome. Kyle, is there anything else that we didn't talk about today that the Endless Customers community needs to hear from you in terms of using more HubSpot right now?
[00:17:26] Kyle Jepson: Um, I mean, a- again, the, the AI stuff is really exciting and, and in spite of myself, that's all we've talked about today. But there are other good things happening inside of HubSpot. And so if, if you ever feel like the AI stuff is too much or you're not ready for it or, or, you know, your data isn't ready for it, you've got work you need to do, there are always new features every day, every week inside of HubSpot, and, and many of them have nothing to do with that, right?
[00:17:53] Kyle Jepson: So if you're looking for something more mundane, a little slower pace, man, spend some time on your CRM index pages. Play [00:18:00] around with some of those settings. You can, you can add zebra striping now. You can, you can drag and select cells. Like, there's a lot of really fun little quality of life things being added to HubSpot all the time.
[00:18:10] Kyle Jepson: And so I, I, I really wanna emphasize HubSpot is not distracted by AI. We're just really eager to make sure we are enabling our customers to get as much value out of it as possible. You know, in, in ... 20 years ago, we helped our customers get on the internet and get found through Google, right? And then, uh, 10, 12 years ago, we helped our customers figure out CRM and start doing sales, right?
[00:18:34] Kyle Jepson: Now, we wanna guide you all through this AI shift, and we're going through it ourselves, but we're trying to lead by example. And, and I think, I think there's a lot to be excited and, and optimistic about
[00:18:46] Bob Ruffolo: I've always loved about HubSpot, you've always built tools to solve your own needs- Yeah
[00:18:49] Bob Ruffolo: that you know that your customers would also need. So you're building it for yourself and for the, your customers, and that's what's made your product so great. Last question for you before we wrap up. [00:19:00] Um, some juicy, like, behind-the-scenes stuff. If you had to guess what we're going to see coming out of HubSpot in the next year or so, and I know you probably can't say specifically-
[00:19:10] Bob Ruffolo: but can you give this audience a little behind the scenes? What more can we be expecting coming on the product over the next year?
[00:19:16] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. Well, I will say, uh, with Unbound so freshly behind us, I honestly don't know. I don't have insider knowledge I might
[00:19:23] Kyle Jepson: tax. Nobody's shared
[00:19:24] Kyle Jepson: and get in, in trouble with the SEC, so I will just speculate freely. Um, a couple of things I'm really keeping my eye on. Uh, o- one really cool new feature that launched at Unbound but did not get a main stage mention is work management.
[00:19:39] Kyle Jepson: Um, this is like Airtable or Asana or ClickUp style tables inside of HubSpot. Um, I think that's really exciting. I think there's a ton of, of stuff that you have previously not been able to store and track inside of HubSpot that now you can store and track inside of HubSpot. It's very early days for that.
[00:19:58] Kyle Jepson: I am very eager to [00:20:00] see where that goes. So that's one thing
[00:20:02] Bob Ruffolo: sounds a little Notiony.
[00:20:03] Kyle Jepson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:04] Bob Ruffolo: makes a lot of sense, 'cause your context there is like, what more context do we need to get there so that's your
[00:20:10] Kyle Jepson: Right. Yeah. And, and so you can build these tables that you can just put whatever w- you want in them, and then you can add columns to them that are connected to all your HubSpot data, not just like CRM records, but assets and, and even like random small stuff, deal splits, right?
[00:20:23] Kyle Jepson: And so like it, it's incredibly deeply integrated into the HubSpot platform, but it's this entirely new piece of real estate. So that's one thing I'm keeping an eye on. Dharmesh at Unbound talked about his, his new pet project, uSpot, which is this, uh, f- fully AI-powered second brain CRM replacement thing for companies, s- uh, single employee companies, right?
[00:20:46] Kyle Jepson: Uh, a solopreneur. Um, and the pattern we've seen with Dharmesh's pet projects, right, is they come into HubSpot. Uh, ChatSpot became Breeze Assistant. Uh, Agent.ai is now Agent Hub. [00:21:00] Um, so I suspect it may take a year or two or three, who knows? Um, but at some point, that will come into HubSpot, and that I, I, I got into that private beta and looked at the first screen and was as lost as a lamb, right?
[00:21:12] Kyle Jepson: It is not HubSpot. It's something entirely new that works in an entirely different way. Um, and so if that gets folded into the platform or if it grows up to become a separate product altogether, I have no idea what the plan is, um, but that will really expand HubSpot. So those two things are really pushing HubSpot in, in, in truly novel directions.
[00:21:32] Kyle Jepson: Uh, these are not, you know, uh, uh, s- sequential minor, uh, updates. This is... These are like paradigm shifts in what HubSpot is and does, and so that's, that's what I'm looking at in the next six to 60 months.
[00:21:45] Bob Ruffolo: When I hear the work updates, it starts making me think, all right, well, we're gonna do more people management stuff inside HubSpot.
[00:21:51] Bob Ruffolo: Then we're gonna br- do more financial stuff inside HubSpot. Is it really going to become the operating system of the company and the second brain of the company? Sounds [00:22:00] like there might be a path there, but we don't know. We don't know. We'll have to see.
[00:22:02] Kyle Jepson: And, and I honestly has not been decided. You know, end of the year is HubSpot's, uh, planning, uh, season. Uh, different product teams are gonna be, uh, reorganizing themselves and, and setting priorities for 2027. And so I'll be finding out, uh, just slightly ahead of the rest of you what the plans are.
[00:22:19] Kyle Jepson: But right now it's, it's anyone's guess
[00:22:21] Bob Ruffolo: Kyle, really a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for coming to our event all these years.
[00:22:27] Bob Ruffolo: We really appreciate you and all the work you're doing for, for the HubSpot community and our community as well.
[00:22:31] Kyle Jepson: Well, and thank you also. We're, we're working in, in, in tandem and, uh, I am... It's such an honor to be here. Thanks, thanks for a great conversation.
[00:22:38] Bob Ruffolo: Well, this has been another episode of the Endless Customers Podcast, live from Endless Customers Live.
[00:22:43] Bob Ruffolo: Until the next episode, we'll see you there.
[00:22:45] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.
Why HubSpot toned down the AI hype
When we got back from HubSpot's Unbound conference this year, I expected the big theme to be more AI. Yamini Rangan, HubSpot's CEO, went in another direction. She showed how many companies using more AI are getting worse results, and HubSpot put only three or four new agents on the main stage.
That stuck with me because IMPACT and HubSpot have worked together for 15 years. Our call notes, transcripts, and deal history all live in our portal, and I wanted to know how to put that history to work.
So I sat down with Kyle Jepson live at Endless Customers Live in Chicago. If you're in the HubSpot community, you probably know Kyle as the face of HubSpot Academy. He's usually among the first to test a new feature, and he teaches the rest of us how to use it.
Use agents only where judgment matters
Kyle's first rule is simple. If a process has to run the same way every time, build a workflow. Agents reason through each task, so they'll occasionally try something new, and that's the last thing you want when you're updating a property or logging a form submission. Save agents for work that needs analysis or creativity.
He also told me to give Breeze your business context before you lean on any agent. The Context tab in Agent Hub is where you write down who your customers are, how you sell, and who you're a good and bad fit for. Once that's in place, you can ask Breeze something like, "Where are we missing sales opportunities?" without explaining your business every time.
Two new agents worth a test
- Campaign Agent can build a full campaign plan in Marketing Studio from a goal or a brief, and it asks follow-up questions when your prompt is vague. Kyle says to use it if you don't know where to start. If you love building campaigns, he'd rather you keep doing it by hand.
- Nurture Agent can rewrite a marketing email for each contact based on their CRM record. You choose which CRM properties it can use and lock the parts it shouldn’t touch, like legal fine print, so it can tailor the greeting, body copy, and CTA to each contact’s engagement while everything else stays the same.
Kyle was just as direct about outside AI tools. He uses Claude every day, but for anything inside HubSpot, he uses Breeze because it knows which properties exist in your account, and Claude sometimes guesses.
I also asked what's coming next.
Kyle was careful not to promise anything, but he's watching work management, which brings Airtable-style tables into HubSpot, and uSpot, Dharmesh Shah's AI-powered CRM experiment for solo business owners. Dharmesh's side projects have a way of ending up inside HubSpot.
If you've been wondering which new AI features in your portal deserve your team's time, this conversation will help you pick where to start. Kyle also shares the small updates with no AI in them that he's excited about.
Watch the full episode above or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice.
Connect with Kyle
Morgan Bennett is the marketing director at Adam Quenneville Roofing & Siding, which serves homeowners across New England with roofing, siding, gutters, and more, and gives back through its AQ Cares community outreach program. Before joining the company about three years ago, Morgan spent 10 years in critical care medicine at her local hospital. She led the company's move from multiple agencies to an in-house team, including a new HubSpot website that launched three weeks early and the hire of a full-time videographer.Kyle Jepson is a HubSpot evangelist and one of the most recognizable teachers at HubSpot Academy, where he started as an Academy professor. He tests new HubSpot features as they roll out and explains them through short social videos, webinars, and Academy courses. Kyle has spoken at IMPACT's events for years, and he was among the first to dig into Agent Hub, Campaign Agent, and Nurture Agent after Unbound 2026.
Keep Learning
Want to go further? Start with these Learning Center resources.
HubSpot Training for Sales and Marketing Teams in 2026 (https://www.impactplus.com/learn/hubspot-training)Using AI for Marketing (https://www.impactplus.com/learn/ai-for-marketing)
Where Should You Start With HubSpot Breeze? (this sprint's LC article, link once published)
Why HubSpot Is the CRM of Choice for the Endless Customers Journey (https://www.impactplus.com/learn/why-hubspot-for-endless-customers)
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Endless Customers is a podcast for business owners/leaders, marketers, creatives, and sales teams who want to build trust, attract the right buyers, and drive sustainable revenue growth.
Produced by IMPACT, a sales and marketing training organization, we help companies implement The Endless Customers System by focusing on the right strategies and actions that build trust, educate buyers, and generate more leads.
Interested in sponsorship opportunities or joining us as a guest? Email brand@impactplus.com.
Facing a challenge in your sales and marketing? Schedule a free coaching session with one of our experts and take the step toward business growth.
Posted On:
Nov 3, 2026
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