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Tom’s Tips Podcast: S3E9 – Fall Festivities & MagHub Updates

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Written by Zach Gilbert

Published: 10/12/2020

Announcer:

Hey, everyone, welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, your place for obscure movie references, cat facts, and everything MagHub related. And now, your host, MagHub Product Manager, Tom Bellen.

Tom:

All right. Welcome to the second take of Tom’s Tips Podcast, the 9.7 edition. We are doing a second take because apparently someone, me, taps on the table too much, and I screwed up the entire podcast. So this will be the tabletop free edition of the podcast. I am joined, like always, by our Marketing Director, Zach Gilbert, the person who called me out for the taps. Zach, how are you doing today?

Zach:

I’m good, Tom. How are you?

Tom:

I’m doing great. I just have my hands in my pockets to try and make sure I don’t do this again, because I obviously can’t control myself. But you know, besides that, I’m excited. It’s a Friday. It’s a beautiful fall Friday where it’s actually warm. I’ve been wearing sweaters and shorts, my favorite fall outfit. It is a great time of year. I know you’re a fall fan yourself. Is that not true?

Zach:

That is absolutely, 100% true.

Tom:

What’s your favorite thing about fall?

Zach:

Ooh, my wife and I usually go to the UP around this time of year. We usually go camping, so either camping, bonfires, kayaking, do some leaf peeping, big leaf peepers here. So pretty much anything outdoorsy. And I am a big pumpkin spice guy, so it could be pumpkin spice latte, it could be those little Pumpkin Delights that Little Debbie makes. Love those things. Just pumpkin everything. Everything should be pumpkins all year round. Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.

Tom:

I’ll have to come back to this leaf peeping, because the way I interpret that, it’s probably the wrong way, knowing my mind. But on the pumpkin stuff, I’ll bring in some pumpkin muffins. I make pumpkin muffins, and I’m the kind of person, because I’m that kind of person, I roast my own pumpkins to do it a lot of the time instead of buying a can because it’s easy. You buy the sugar pumpkins, you cut them in half, put a little olive oil on them, put them in the oven for 45 minutes, scoop it out, that’s your pumpkin puree. I’ll bring you my fresh pumpkin muffins. I generally put a cream cheese frosting on top. I don’t know how you feel about that.

Zach:

That’s usually how we make our pumpkin muffins as well, so yes.

Tom:

We’ll have a pumpkin muffin-off making some things. Look, back to this leaf peeping. Again, is it more wholesome than I imagine? Because it sounds… Leaf peeping? What is leaf peeping exactly?

Zach:

Have you really never heard the term “leaf peeping”?

Tom:

I mean, are you just looking at leaves? No, I don’t think I have heard of leaf peeping. Is this something you do to the leaf? Are you just looking at leaves?

Zach:

I mean, yes. I mean, this is interesting. I’m ready to go on a small tangent here. When we had our meeting last week with the whole team, David Fry, the chairman of our company, was talking to Rudy Pataro, the CEO of our company, and David said, “Oh, you’re going to do some leaf looking,” and I’m like, “Leaf looking? That doesn’t make any sense. Leaf peeping, Dave. That doesn’t compute.” But the fact that you don’t know leaf peeping makes me feel like I’m saying it wrong. So is it leaf looking, leaf peeping? I don’t know anymore.

Tom:

You’re going to look at leaves. You’re going to look at leaves. Why don’t you just say, “I’m going to go look at some leaves”?

Zach:

But that just sounds even more weird, don’t it? “I’m just going to look at some leaves”?

Tom:

Well, I would say, “Oh, I’m going to go up to the north. I’m going to kayak, I’m going to have a fire, I’m going to do all that stuff, and I’m going to enjoy the foliage.” I don’t know. Enjoy the leaves, look at the leaves. Leaf peeping, it makes me think there’s something more to it when you say instead of, “I’m just going to, oh, look at the leaves.” Would you say on Christmas, like if you go to Christmas lights, are you Christmas lights peeping when you go to look at people’s Christmas lights?

Zach:

That’s exactly what I call it. Isn’t that what you call it?

Tom:

Oh, okay. No, I call that wasted time, actually. But I don’t know why you need to go up north. Are the leaves better up there? Are there special leaves? Aren’t all leaves the same?

Zach:

I’m not sure how often you go to the UP. I try to go at least once a month or a couple of times a month. Yes, it is much better up there. If you want some seclusion, you want some beautiful rock faces, beautiful blue waters that’s just crystal clear, yes, go to the UP. The leaves pop more. It’s usually colder up there, so they get more vibrant. If you come into Ann Arbor, east or west Michigan, lower peninsula, you only get a couple weeks of really good leaves. If you go to the UP, you pretty much get one to three months of it, and it’s very similar to going out east, like Connecticut, and Virginia is like that. It’s just gorgeous. It lasts for so much longer, which is just perfect.

Tom:

Oh yeah. I mean the UP, I don’t go too often up there. Maybe it’s once a year. We also go… Well, before this fun year, we would go up north to an area not quite in the UP but pretty northern Michigan, so yes, it is a beautiful place. It’s very nice up there. Very few people, which is a big thing that we enjoy, fewer people around us, as we are people haters most of the time. It is a very nice time here. I just… Getting a leaf peeping, I assumed that’s what it was, but I was wondering if there was more to it. And there’s not, and that’s fine, so now I’m going to just use that in all types of things, anytime I go to look at something. “Oh, I’m going to do some sport peeping. I’m going to go to a sports game. I’m going to go do some football peeping, because I’m going to go watch football.” I’m just going to employ this in all walks of life now.

Zach:

So you’re just going to be a peeping Tom.

Tom:

Yeah, exactly. Perfect. See, that’s where it gets to. I am the official peeping Tom. Anyone else? You could be a peeping Zack. It’s not a problem. Peeping Tom. I also can’t buy a cabin. Well, I can until my brother and sister have a kid. But for me, too, a big thing of this is Halloween trick or treating. I was a huge trick or treater. I, again, am someone who probably trick or treated… If you were ever familiar with the show Freaks and Geeks, there’s an episode about the trick or treating where basically they’re like, “Aren’t you too old for this?” That was me. I definitely went one year too long. I don’t know where you fall on the trick-or-treating landscape.

Zach:

Due to the fact that I lived down in the middle of nowhere and my nearest neighbors were Amish and it was about 15 miles from town, I was only able to go a few times. That’s when my parents actually wanted to drive me to town to do some trick or treating. I never got to go a lot. I loved trick-or-treating. In fact, I actually won a costume contest at my elementary school where my mother and I basically made a version of the headless horseman, and she ended up sewing, because she was big into sewing, and she basically cut the top hood off a winter jacket. It was red, so it looked like I had like a bloody stump for a head, and she used a cape. It was amazing. So yeah, won first prize in that bad boy. But no, I pretty much stopped around middle school. That’s when I was done.

Tom:

Yeah, I think I was like end of middle school. I don’t think I went high school, but it was still just a little too long, which is one reason why I never had cool costumes, I don’t think, either. I’m trying to remember if I had any good costumes. Nothing memorable, but this year I have a costume, because one thing I am excited about going with kids is that my kids can start going. Obviously, we’ll see what happens this year, but I’ll be excited to take them out trick or treating until they say I can’t go anymore, which will be sad.

Tom:

I’ve also always thought it’d be fun if I just went trick or treating in my life and be like, “I want candy. Why is this an agist thing?” But this year, my son is… Just to see what people did. They should give you candy.

Tom:

So my son this year, he’s really into… I mean, it depends. Every day it changes what show he’s into, but PJ Masks is a big thing for him, so we already bought him a Gecko Boy outfit, and he’s already worn that downtown, like a month earlier. We took him downtown wearing that. So this year, for all those PJ Masks fans out there, I am getting a full adult Catboy outfit, and my wife will be going as Owlette, and we also got a Romeo the villain, and we’re going to put that in my… My father-in-law will be potentially wearing that. He doesn’t know that yet, but we’ll break that out. Somebody will wear it, so very excited for that. Just doing fun things, figuring out something to do with it this year, because who knows what will happen? But it’s always fun to get tricks or treats, and I could tell you what. This 9.7 release is full of treats. Am I right? No tricks. Well, hopefully no tricks.

Tom:

So yeah, we are moving into nine seven. This is, in my mind, a bit of a transition-y type of release versus some of our others. We just did have our fall forum, which was very exciting. We got a lot of good feedback from the forum. We did my feature freak out, which again gave way for people to suggest new features in the system. We also did a vote on a lot of features that have been very popular, so we got a lot of good feedback of what we should prioritize next. So with this current release, there’s a lot of some things that we’re kind of fixing up, getting ready for the next push to the end of the year.

Tom:

One of the big items on here that we’ve been working on for a while, we mentioned in the podcast a while, is the dashboard. This is the release where it will become the main login page. We’re not removing all the pages like we said we would do before just because there’s some things we didn’t quite get to until a little late, so we felt a little uncomfortable of just ditching it until we gave people a little more time on it. No rush. We’d rather make it safe as possible. So again, it will be gone in November, but at least now when you log in, you will get to that dashboard to see the message of the day.

Tom:

We’ve also added a couple new widgets for alerts and being able to see the digital calendar, so part of this too is removing all that old calendar functionality. I know, Zach, you’re a dashboard fan. We built some things for you. Any thoughts on the dashboard?

Zach:

I’m glad it’s going default. I use it every day. It has replaced my lead status report because it offers more functionality, and it also presents in a way that I like more, so I think overall it’s nice. Like I said, I’m glad it’s default, because right now, even the logo to go back to is kind of a pain sometimes. So no, I think it’s all in the right direction, gets a lot of flexibility, and it really does provide a lot of reporting without actually having to go into a report, so it’s pretty awesome.

Tom:

Yeah. I was thinking a name. I always call it a workstation sometimes when I demo and show it, because I think for a lot of people, they don’t really have to go much else on the site, or at least they can navigate to other spots they need directly from it. So yeah, a lot of good use cases for it for everyone in the system. It’s not just a sales thing.

Tom:

Another big thing is part of the forum, we want to push forward on some UI/UX items. We always know that’s a big issue. It’s always something people say is easy to use. I think we released that Ellipse hover status out, which I know a lot of people have liked. They wanted to do other things with that or what we show or not, so I think that’s helped with the clicks. It’s always a big fight on clicks. Part of this release too, we’re adding kind of an update to some of the search fields so you don’t lose your filters as much so that you may not notice right away until maybe later when you’re like, “Oh, I don’t have to redo that again.” So I think it’s one of those things that will just make your daily life easier, fewer times having to redo a search filter or resetting a page or losing your place.

Tom:

So we’ve added this, called persistence. Some of the searches you’ll see that on, things like the company contact search and some of the main reports, and we will be adding that to the rest of the site. So I know that’s helpful, and I know one thing that’s also in the queue right now is the breadcrumbs. That’s not in this release, but we have a few UI/UX elements that we’re trying to push forward into for the rest of this year, so that’s one of our priority items.

Tom:

I don’t know if you had any preference on… Well, I think you did have a UI/UX item you wanted to fix, but your thoughts on breadcrumbs, persistence?

Zach:

Yeah, breadcrumbs are nice. I’m trying to think of what I actually… I know we had that UI/UX vote not too long ago. I’m trying to think of which one I actually wanted all my points into.

Tom:

You wanted, I think, the plus button. You wanted, “Hey, if I don’t have something on this page and I have permission to add it somewhere else, let me add it now so I don’t have to go back.

Zach:

You are correct, yes. As a person that creates many drip campaigns and marketing campaigns inside the Aysling and Mega platform, yes, you are correct. Plus buttons so I don’t have to go backwards in steps, yes. Yes.

Tom:

See? I remember everything. I know all. It’s terrifying. I wish I could forget most of the things I know. So yeah, that will be an exciting part of that. Along with that, too, one area of the site we’re going to be doing a lot more in the next release. We started this release a little bit with a new way to add it, but if you are someone who uses projects, you’ll notice that now, when you add a project, it’s more of a seamless process. It will actually go to its own page, and you can add the participants and everything in one step versus before you’d add a project and then you’d have to go some here participants. So we’re basically going to redo all that to make the adding and editing of projects and tasks much simpler, and we’re going to be interested in seeing a new type of view within projects that we think could be really useful elsewhere on the site.

Tom:

So I’m pretty excited for that. Again, the project edition is going to be in there. Project view, even Zach doesn’t really know about this too much yet. You might’ve seen it, but I think that’s going to be really something that it kind of takes some of the technology of what we have in the dashboard, like what you see on the calendared agenda where you click and it slides over but you don’t lose where you are, that type of view into other areas of the site will be cool. I think it’s cool, and as long as I think it’s cool, then my mom thinks it’s cool and we’re all cool.

Tom:

And that part there, and then along with that, just some different odds and ends items, being able to CC people on emails, to do with that part, a couple updates to the slot media areas for pricing and imports, but really it is the dashboard. And then we’re looking into the fall and we’re looking at some different things we want to do with automation. We have things scheduled for automation help with that in terms of ordering. We’re looking into a big integration with market tool HubSpot. We’re in there. I think I touched the table, so there might have been some-

Zach:

You are touching the table constantly.

Tom:

Oh, man. I’m sorry. In that case, and then yeah, so some other fun things. So I don’t know. What are you excited for as the year ends, Zach?

Zach:

You to stop touching your table’s the first thing that comes to my mind, but I think other than that, I’m excited about HubSpot. Everybody makes fun of me for being HubSpot. I know on our first take, you made fun of me saying that I wore a t-shirt every day to work that says HubSpot. That’s also still not true, but no, I’m excited for doing more with HubSpot, working with more integration partners, and updating the integration partners that we already have, whether that’s QuickBooks Online, Mailchimp, Mandrill, just doing more with our partners. I think that’s important. I think that’s what I’m looking forward to this year, and yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Tom:

I’ve pushed myself away from the table now, so hopefully that helps a little bit. BSO now, too. I mean, one other thing is the scary movie world. We are in the scary movie time of this. AMC’s Halloween and all those fun stuff, and my wife is very into scary movies and scary shows. She started watching a show recommendation Castle Rock on Hulu, which I don’t know if she likes it. I don’t know. And some of that other stuff. Are there any scary shows, movies that you always watch this time of year?

Zach:

I would probably say I don’t really watch a lot of scary movies. That was never really my thing. I do watch spookier stuff. I’m a big fan of Stranger Things, the monsters, the demons. It also has Halloween within it as well, which I think is cool, so that 80s nostalgia, horror, a big fan of zombie movies. Anything with George Romero, so Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, so on and so forth. And then just recently got into the show, and we talked about this briefly, on the CW channel, Swamp Thing by DC. It’s a antihero show, but it was on the app. Never watched it, but now I saw it on CW while flipping through channels, so yeah, it’s pretty good.

Tom:

Yeah, it’s weird, because I didn’t know anyone actually watched CW. I just assumed it’s on the CW, that’s… That’s kind of how I viewed CBS. I was always an NBC/Fox kid, maybe, and so I viewed CBS as old people shows and CW as shows that couldn’t make it onto a real network. So it’s like, “Well, if it’s on CW, obviously no one real ever wanted to watch it. It’s where all sad loser shows went to go.” So again, my stigma to have to get over is CBS is Everyone Loves Raymond. Old people watch that show, and CW, it’s the shows that couldn’t make it onto Fox or NBC. So that’s how I imagined it, was always-

Zach:

Wow.

Tom:

Yeah, I mean, that’s how I pigeonholed these groups. I just felt CBS was the old person channel. I don’t know why. It’s kind of like how I think all cats are female and all dogs are boys. There’s no real science. There’s no reason. It’s just if you see a cat, it’s a girl. See a dog, it’s a boy. I mean, that’s just science, right? I don’t know. It’s always how I envisioned it. It’s a weird thing, what’s inside my mind.

Tom:

One thing with cats, though, as we talked about, some movies that I know I’m probably going to watch three or four times as a cat man, talking cat, is Hocus Pocus, which is a classic film. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s scary, but depending on your age, it could be scary. Maybe if I watched it as a child, it was scary in that case. So part of the trivia question for this is name the three sisters that are in Hocus Pocus. If you tweet the answer to @Maghub and name the three sisters that are in Hocus Pocus, you may win a signed DVD of Hocus Pocus. Probably not, and if anything, it’d be signed by me, but you’d get a prize for Twitter. So @Maghub, three sisters in Hocus Pocus. You get the prize. And with that, too, is the cat fact.

Tom:

Here’s an interesting thing. I brought this up. We lost our cat for like a week and a half, and I was having a great time. His name’s Bentley. He is evil, and his goal in life is to destroy me, and he ran away. Our cats have been very aggressive running away recently, and so they just go out and now maybe they come back. Unfortunately, they do. I think Bentley was outside all last night. But I was saying maybe I should figure out a way to get a cat door so they can just come in and out. I’m looking at it, and the cat door is apparently… Isaac Newton invented the cat door. I was reading about this. It was on the Purina site, so they said this must be true.

Tom:

But apparently he was so frustrated, similar to me, about his cats always scratching on his door trying to get in that he created the cat door so they would stop bothering him while he was doing his work, whereas I would like them to leave and then I’m going to lock the door so they can’t come back in.

Tom:

So yeah, so that is a trivia. One, again, the Hocus Pocus, the sisters. Tweet @Maghub with that answer, and the cat door was Isaac Newton. I mean, I think that’s more important than inventing physics, which obviously he did. He invented physics and apples. That’s what I remember from my school. So yeah, I don’t know. Anything that you want to plug, Zach, about Isaac Newton, Hocus Pocus, cat doors?

Zach:

Can I ask why you were on the Purina website?

Tom:

Well, believe it or not, I don’t actually know all these facts right off the top of my head, cat facts, so sometimes I struggle. And because this has become so popular, I mean, the demand for cat facts is huge. People would come up to me on the street saying, “I need more cat facts.” Can’t even count, because it’s no actual number. So sometimes I go around looking for these different things, and so when I look up cat facts, that’s how I got to that site, to try and make sure I don’t find just random things. So that’s why I was on the Purina website, because they have a cat facts section.

Zach:

All right, so next month’s sponsor is going to be Purina.

Tom:

Maybe. I don’t always get my cat facts from there. It’s just I look around and find something.

Zach:

All right, then. Well, there’s nothing else more for me. The fall forum went really well. If you’ve gotten a survey from us for the fall forum, please fill it out. I know we did choose a winner for the survey winner, but it does help us out for next year. I know we are leaning more to a hybrid approach, so that way it can be partially in person and partially online to get more attendees to join us. I know providing the recordings worked really well this year. Everybody had a good time. Obviously, it wasn’t as much fun as the in-person, but it was a really good time. It was nice to see everybody. We were up to 126 attendees, so about 50 more than last year, and I’m going to hope to get even higher next year.

Tom:

All right. Well, yeah, it was a good time. Enjoyed the forum, but yeah, I look forward to next year. We can do it in person, and maybe even soon we can do these podcasts back in person again, but to the socially distanced times. All right, well, thank you all for listening, and have a great fall and Halloween.

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