What we have to start doing is stop trying to play someone else's game better. We have to start playing our game that fits our strengths. Doug and Mike discuss Inbound 2019, their takeaways, and what they expect to see moving forward from the conference.
Both Doug and Mike walked away this year from Inbound '19 with different takes and insights than previous years. Mike, who had a booth, wished they could have had one more day to talk with those he hadn't seen. Yet, he enjoyed the conversations that were brought up during his time there, and came to the conclusion that people are 100% talking differently about their issues. As businesses continue to struggle on differentiating themselves, he said this year it was more prominent that marketers realized this as a true problem and that they're trying to figure out how to address it rather than ignore it altogether. On the other hand, Doug's major takeaway was, "Man this thing is big. This thing is really big." He walked away thinking about the fact that people work too damn hard, especially to get to the results they want. That insight comes from talking with others after his session as the number one comment he got was that what he had said made a lot of sense, yet it was too hard to actually implement.
The other aspect of the conference that was executed very well were the keynotes from Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Dharmesh nailed the aspect of the diversity issue in that the true issue we're facing isn't in demographics, but is actually in how people think and their perspective. In today's word, we're trying to solve the unsolvable problems using legacy approaches talked about as if they're revolutionary and it's causing us to look out into space for the answer. Yet, the answer is here, right in front of us - we already know it! Ultimately, it's not about what we do, it's about how we do it.