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Tom’s Tips Podcast: S4E5 – The MagHub Fall Forum is Here!

Written by Tom Bellen

Published: 08/31/2021

Transcript

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 Bellen:

Hello everyone, and welcome to Tom’s Tips Podcast, 10.8 edition, I guess, August edition. Not really sure at this point, because it’s been a while since we’ve done one and I had a long vacation, but welcome back everyone. I am the host, Tom Bellen, product manager for Aysling. Joining always, our marketing consultant, Zach Gilbert. Say hello to the Jugheads, Zach.

Zach Gilbert:

Hello, Jugheads.

Tom Bellen:

And also, someone new to our podcast, a guest, maybe part of a new series, get to know your Ayslinger, so I’ve just named it, the replacement of Zach, much better version, Megan Martin, please say hello to the Jugheads.

Megan Martin:

Hello everybody. Nice to be here.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah, welcome to this elusive club of people who’ve joined the podcast. Not many people have wanted to over the last year, so we’re forcing people to do it now.

Megan Martin:

I’m honored.

Tom Bellen:

So what would you be doing right now if you weren’t doing this podcast?

Megan Martin:

That’s a great question. I’m making my way through the Sopranos, so probably watching that.

Tom Bellen:

Sopranos. All right.

Megan Martin:

It’s a classic.

Tom Bellen:

So, okay. I’ve always thought about watching that because I was behind it. I saw the final episode of it. I’ll spoil it for you. But why all of a sudden? Has it been a while getting into it? Is there a reason now?

Megan Martin:

So my dad just watched it all the way through probably a month ago and he actually didn’t give it great reviews, but he gave it a shot, so I figured that I would do the same. And it’s long, so it takes up a lot of time, and that’s what I was looking for.

Tom Bellen:

That’s interesting. Okay, so a lot of time, like reading my release notes. I mean that’s interesting because everyone loves it, like oh, I got to watch it. I got to watch it. But you’re going into it after your dad watched it and was like it wasn’t that great, and you’re still putting the effort. It’s interesting.

Megan Martin:

I am. And you know what? I’m not super impressed so far and I think I have one season left, so I will let you know if anything drastic happens to change my opinion, but right now, it’s fine, it’s okay.

Tom Bellen:

Ooh, some hot takes. I feel like at that point, you’re that far along, I don’t think all of a sudden it’s going to flip for you. I don’t know, I’ve only seen a little bit of it, but I don’t think there’s a game changer in the Sopranos.

Megan Martin:

Probably.

Tom Bellen:

I think some shows, they did have some things that turned it around a bit, like Lost started weird and then they had some really interesting stuff, then they lost themselves. So yeah, I don’t know. Zach, did you ever watch Sopranos?

Zach Gilbert:

No, I can’t say I did.

Tom Bellen:

Is it because you’re not into mafia type of things?

Zach Gilbert:

No, I like mafia types of things, I can’t do the long commitment. I get bored, burned out, I need to do something else.

Tom Bellen:

Don’t tell your wife that.

Zach Gilbert:

Wow.

Tom Bellen:

But I mean how many seasons is it? Was it 7, 8, 9, 15?

Megan Martin:

Well, it’s 6, but there’s 6A and 6B, which is also making me nervous, because what on earth does that mean?

Tom Bellen:

Yeah, HBO doesn’t do well when they split those things, #Game of Thrones. That also took a turn, but in a bad way. Man, we’re just ripping on HBO series all the time. Well, so after Sopranos, do you have another series you’re going to jump into?

Megan Martin:

Nothing on the horizon. I’m looking for recommendations though, if you guys have anything good?

Tom Bellen:

Well, we can do that now. I guess we’ll all do things. So I’ll let Zach, you go for it. If you had to recommend, I can probably guess what it’s going to be, one TV series name, what would it be? You can only have one.

Zach Gilbert:

Can I ask what you think it’s going to be?

Tom Bellen:

Well, I’m down to two. I think it’s either going to be Firefly or Eureka. I’m going to guess Eureka just because I don’t think you’re going to do Firefly. I don’t know why, but I’m going to guess Eureka.

Zach Gilbert:

You’re wrong on both accounts. I’m going to recommend, sorry, Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is going to be my recommendation, hands down going to be my recommendation.

Tom Bellen:

I don’t think that’s fair because that’s in the middle of it, so that’s like joining. I feel like this has to be an end series, but okay, so you’re just really in the Ted Lasso stuff right now. Got it.

Zach Gilbert:

I’ve watched that show a couple dozen times now.

Megan Martin:

I’m watching it right now and I do love that one, Zach. That is a great recommendation.

Zach Gilbert:

There you go. See. Ha, Tom.

Tom Bellen:

Well, I don’t think that’s fair because I was looking for past series. I’m also watching Ted Lasso, because who isn’t watching Ted Lasso at that point? I would say if you want to go on the HBO route, their best show that I think they had was The Wire, but that’s pretty intense.

Megan Martin:

Okay.

Tom Bellen:

But The Wire is very good and it’s realistic. And I lived in Baltimore for a little bit, actually sat next to one of the characters actors in a smoothie shop once, it was weird.

Megan Martin:

What?

Tom Bellen:

But anyway, so that or the other show that I think is really good, and also it didn’t drag itself out too much, so now I’m giving two, this is not really fair, that, if you want a really good crime realistic thing, or Breaking Bad is a great character study. And if you want a really weird one that’s shorter is The Leftovers. Those are three that stick with me of just I’m glad I watched those. I wasn’t disappointed at any point watching those series.

Zach Gilbert:

My gosh

Tom Bellen:

So what would you recommend? What are you going to tell Zach and I to watch?

Megan Martin:

Geez, that’s a good question. Honestly, top of mind for me was Ted Lasso because that’s popular right now.

Zach Gilbert:

Well done.

Tom Bellen:

Oh, okay. You marketing people are all the same. Have no depth. God.

Zach Gilbert:

You’ve got dark and sad shows. I don’t want to hear. I’ve looked at your last few recommendations and they are dark.

Tom Bellen:

All right, I’m trying to think of a show that’s happy that I’ve watched that people…

Zach Gilbert:

Doesn’t exist.

Tom Bellen:

It does exist, probably. I don’t know. Curb your Enthusiasm, is that dark?

Zach Gilbert:

No.

Tom Bellen:

They have a new season coming out. I love that show.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s a good show.

Tom Bellen:

All right, so let’s get back to Megan. We have to do some piercing questions here so we can get to know our Ayslinger. So let’s just get right into some hard hitting questions. One, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor and why?

Megan Martin:

I’m going to go with Moose Tracks because I enjoy vanilla ice cream but it’s kind of boring, so Moose Tracks gives you that little extra that makes it delicious and still gives you the vanilla.

Tom Bellen:

Right. What is the best thing about working at Aysling since you’ve joined, obviously besides the fact that I work there, so that, and then what’s the worst thing you’ve experienced?

Megan Martin:

Oh geez, well the best thing, besides you, of course, is just definitely all the people. Everyone is so kind, everyone has been so helpful, and I’ve really appreciated that. The worst thing. The worst thing is I haven’t been able to play air hockey yet.

Tom Bellen:

Is that because obviously we are not in the office? And by the way, the correct answer was the worst thing is Jeremy Lewis, so you’ve got that one wrong. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done that is safe for work that you can say on this podcast? Nuts.

Megan Martin:

Craziest thing I’ve ever done that’s safe for work. Okay. Well, that’s a a good question.

Tom Bellen:

You got in trouble with the police, fugitive situation.

Megan Martin:

Nothing quite like that, but I did almost fall off a waterfall one time. That wasn’t on purpose, but I was leaning over the railing and the railing broke, and I fell 10 feet, and I landed on this little ledge, and I had to be rescued by my parents who created a human monkey ladder.

Tom Bellen:

Oh man. How old were you at that point?

Megan Martin:

Probably seven. So not very old.

Tom Bellen:

And did you sue for billions of dollars?

Megan Martin:

I did not, unfortunately.

Tom Bellen:

Why not? What waterfall was it?

Megan Martin:

Oh, it was one of the ones in the UP, I’m forgetting which one. My family loves waterfalls so we’ve seen all of them a million times.

Tom Bellen:

Do they still love waterfalls?

Megan Martin:

They do, probably even more so now.

Tom Bellen:

Geez. Yeah, seriously. Are we sure that railing wasn’t messed with at that point?

Megan Martin:

I’m not anymore, now that you put that in my head.

Tom Bellen:

All right. So I probably could guess the answer to this, maybe, but if you could do anything you wanted in life as an occupation, besides obviously Aysling, what would it be?

Megan Martin:

Definitely a food critic, but I would get fired pretty quickly because I like almost every food I’ve ever tried so my reviews would not be very interesting.

Tom Bellen:

So you have to spin it in some way of how to rank the food on your scale. I always think movie critics are bad because they have to rank it on type food, because you’d be like this food is good, it’s not Michelin star good, but is it good for the type of food it’s trying to be? That’s why it’s not the rating system. So that’s where you’d be like it’s good, but rating compared to the other stuff you have. See, I was going to guess it’d be hockey, because I thought you’re really into hockey, so maybe want to be a professional hockey player, but I was wrong.

Megan Martin:

Oh, I would love to do that too but you know what? Eating is much easier than hockey.

Tom Bellen:

Well Zach, what would you do? Anything you could.

Zach Gilbert:

Oh, this is not get to know Zach. I’ve done enough of these episodes where I don’t need to do this anymore, Tom.

Tom Bellen:

I’m flipping it because I was going to do this into a transition and you’re screwing up the transition I was going to say.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s what I go for in life. I would probably say I would go back to becoming a firefighter again.

Tom Bellen:

You can’t go back to being something. What, was there a fire that you never fought? Like a back draft situation? Or is it just because you enjoyed the … Why?

Zach Gilbert:

Why, Tom? Because I miss the comradery. It was a good family, they were basically my family, they were good people. We got to do some cool stuff. I got to help some cool people. I was more in shape because the fire department made me stay in shape, that was nice. It was a good experience for me overall, so it was probably my best time in my life.

Megan Martin:

Very nice.

Tom Bellen:

My best job still was cutting steel with a flame thrower, basically. Still the best job of my life. Which is simple and I think it was just being outdoors, a group of just guys hanging out, working hard, ending the day, and just crashing, exhausted. It was fantastic. But despite the fact that we would want to work somewhere else, we’re still glad to work here for you people, you Jugheads, building great software for you all. So even though we all have different dreams, we’re still working hard for you. That was the transition. I blew it a bit. But anyway, talking about the software at the jobs we currently work at, I don’t even know the last time we did this release, but I was gone for two weeks, I was on vacation. You guys didn’t ask me about my vacation. Very insulted about that.

Tom Bellen:

But our last release, because I wasn’t here, people panicked, they didn’t know what to do with themselves, so it was a lot of fixing of things, a lot of just small things that we did, getting ready for some of the bigger items that we wanted to release in the fall, getting ready for the forum. So we cleaned up some of those items, added a couple little things to the dashboard to help the usability of that. So now, it’s easier to share dashboards, and move dashboards, and rearrange those. We have some plans to add some new widgets also, coming up here in the next release, so we want to touch on that a bit. As I mentioned, the release, it’s the one-year anniversary of the dashboard. Been around for about a year now in public life, so it’s been a long journey for that dashboard.

Tom Bellen:

We’ve also modified a little bit the ad hoc groups and how that can work, as more people are trying to take advantage of what that does for invoicing and all those fun things. And we’ve been expanding a bit on some of our reporting. We added a couple reports, including the consolidated production report and our new annual by quarter sales report. And we are working on ways to continue the consolidation report system by basically, we realized that most of our users only use a handful of our reports, so taking what the core parts of the other side of the reports and just having these really robust, well done, just a few of the reports. So that way, you’re wondering what this report does? It has this filter, this one doesn’t have that filter. So trying to consolidate that so it’s like okay, here’s the filters you need. You just have to go there. Because we know our system can be big and daunting, and we’re trying to reduce some of the sprawl of it, and reduce some of the clicks by making some of those core filters and reports easier to find.

Tom Bellen:

So those are some of the things that we did in the last release. We also did some internal things for wellbeing to make it easier on our support team, to help you in turning on modules and stuff, but that’s all boring. But its upcoming release, as we’re getting closer to this, which will be the release right before our forum, we are doing a few different, exciting things. So we’re continuing our integration with Accelerant and working with them. We’re excited, they’re going to be at our forum to talk about their product integration and different things we can do. We’ve had some people talk in the community about it, so we’re just continuing to push each other on that integration and the different things we can do with it. And we’re working with a new group with payment processing to make that more secure, which again, I don’t know if we’ll get to it exactly this release, but soon. And not only will it just release some of those security issues, security’s always coming up.

Tom Bellen:

It will also allow us to give our customer view more choices on what processors you want to use. I know that we have a sales rep who bugs us all the time about Stripe, and that can be one of those that we can support here in the near future, so working with people on that. We’re looking to expand our integration with HubSpot, as we’ve had some customers who were using things like MailChimp or signing up with us, and since we are a HubSpot partner, I’ve seen the value of not only our product, but HubSpot, especially them working together. So we’re looking to push deal information from HubSpot to ours into a project. So again, if your sales team is morally focused on HubSpot, they really liked that as a CRM, but HubSpot doesn’t really focus on delivery and the invoicing that we do, they can push that information over to us and then work from there. So more flexibility for how your team wants to work as we continue to work with them and build our relationships, really. Really fun stuff.

Tom Bellen:

We also, again, are going to expand on some of our consolidate reports to add some of those core filters that people have wanted. We’re expanding on our document manager. We’ve added some new features over the last few releases to make it easier to manage, now we’re going to look to actually, instead of having us store the files on it, it’d be using Amazon Web Services. And so what it could mean is that you can have much better file storage and you can do things like sharing files via links. So that’s actually been a feature that we’ve noticed has gotten a lot more use and a lot more people want to do it, so we’re going to take advantage of that piece, the software, and expand it to give you a lot more functionality. And then we can think about other systems like what timed it into Dropbox. So that’s something we’re working on as well. And then a lot of it is getting prepared a bit for the forum. We’re doing a lot of prep right now for that.

Tom Bellen:

I am working on Tom’s Feature Freakout. I think this will be the third one that I do, or maybe it will be the third in-person, fourth overall. Each one has been different. This one’s also going to be different. I’m going to start using my company as guinea pigs for some of the games we’re going to play. So we’re working on that stuff too. And one of the big features from the last Feature Freakout, it was besides some stuff. I think it was still number one, but the number one voted on feature we actually just released was the ability to move payments around invoices. We always had that in the back burners, but it was a complicated change, but it was definitely something that came from the forum that we knew is crucial. And I always tell my teams, if we’re going to get something voted on the forum, that’s high, we need to knock those out, and wanting to make sure we that in before the forum because I didn’t want to hear again like, “We already voted on this and wanted this one.”

Tom Bellen:

So we got that out there. So we are preparing some ways to get some features out, especially we can get that information at the forum. So if you do come, I know we have a decent amount of people sign up recently, whether it’s coming in person or online. Be prepared to bring those ideas because they do get talked about a lot and we’ll probably see some of them, maybe even a couple of them, get launched into the product the week of the forum. That happened last year too. So that’s some of the stuff that’s going on in our side. So I don’t know Zach, Megan, anything that you found particularly exciting of our last release, or maybe what’s coming up next in the next release? We’ll go with Meghan first because Zach just talks too much. So Megan was there anything exciting or you’re excited about upcoming or maybe you just want to talk about something you’re excited about that’s going to happen at the forum?

Megan Martin:

Oh man, the forum is so exciting, guys. I hope that everybody is able to sign up and attend. I think the biggest thing that I’m excited for at the forum is to check out those one-on-one sessions that I know Jeremy, and Aaron, and a few other people are going to have, Tom, you included, where people can spend time with MagHub experts and ask their questions. I’m excited to peep on those and check those out.

Tom Bellen:

Well, most of the time people just do that to yell at me, so I don’t find those very exciting.

Megan Martin:

Even better.

Tom Bellen:

Exactly why you may enjoy that. Zach, I know you’re not going to be at this year’s forum, so that’s my most exciting thing is you not being there, but is there something exciting as far as what we have? It’s probably HubSpot, you love HubSpot, or maybe [DocuManager 00:19:33]. I don’t know. See, I would guess, but I was wrong on the Eureka guess. So anything that, as we talked about, tickled your fancy?

Zach Gilbert:

Hey, wrong again. I’m going to have to go with Accelerant this time, I think. It’s a cool team. I’ve gotten to meet them a few times and chat with them. They’re all great people. Very similar type of company to Aysling, which has makes it easy to work with them. Their platform is great. It works well with ours, which makes it really neat. It’s been a requested integration, and I’m glad we were able to strike up a partnership and go far beyond just the integration. I’m glad it’s a partnership, it’s a relationship, and we can work together. So nope, Accelerant gets my votes.

Tom Bellen:

Well, I mean I knew you were going to pick anything I didn’t say so it’s not fair, but yeah, I have been excited over the last few months and we have a couple of others in there that can’t really speak to yet because they’re not full, but a couple other, like you said, partnerships that we’re looking to build. We have integrations, but a lot of that is hey, there’s this website. They have an open API. You just build something and you never talk to each other. But with Accelerant, we are working together on helping them as well expand their APIs and helping us with the customers to build this out, because I think there’s maybe one other software couple that had something, but we’re definitely working directly with them and we’ll keep expanding on it as we get more customer items, and I’m excited for them to be at the forum.

Tom Bellen:

Like again, with HubSpot, it’s just knowing that we’re a partner. They know our name. We’re not just someone who’s scraped their website’s APIs. So yeah, I’m always excited about integrations, taking advantage of new things, might tie into one of my games. You never know. But none of you talked about my vacation, so that was insulting. But at the same time, I have a couple of friends who live nearby, they also went on vacation. And they came home and did the worst thing you could possibly do. And what do you guys think that was?

Zach Gilbert:

I don’t know.

Tom Bellen:

A lot of opportunity for jokes here. Nothing? You could have said they were my friends or came to talk to me.

Zach Gilbert:

That’s a given.

Tom Bellen:

But if we think about the cat facts, they got two cats. And I told them that was a terrible idea. If they listened to my podcast, they’d understand that cats are the worst. They got two cats. And they had a situation where they actually thought they had two neutered cats, but after some incident, they weren’t sure that once that one cat was neutered. They actually were not sure what sex that cat was. So they had to do some investigation. Now, in the end, it turns out that that cat was actually neutered and was a male, so they figured that out. But yeah, vacation was fun. Cats were terrible. Came back to them. They’re still here. I hope they’d left, even left a note, but they didn’t. But we got back home, had more fun, COVID scares. I’ve been stuck at home with my kids. And one movie that we started watching recently, because that’s how I parent my children while I’m working is TV, and we watched this movie called Animal Crackers. Have you guys heard or seen Animal Crackers on Netflix?

Zach Gilbert:

Nope.

Megan Martin:

I have not.

Tom Bellen:

So this is an interesting movie because when you watch it, you’re confused because the cast is ridiculous. It has Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Ian McKellen, Gilbert Gottfried, and Sylvester Stallone is in it. So crazy cast and it’s basically about a circus, animated film, and there’s these magical animal crackers, you eat the cracker, you turn into the animal. But we’ve been watching it recently, and what’s interesting and will be my movie trivia for this podcast is this movie was released on Netflix in 2020 but it has a much longer saga than that.

Tom Bellen:

So it actually was in development started way before that. So my trivia question is in what country and in what year was Animal Crackers, now a top streaming movie on Netflix, originally released? So what country and in what year? And it came out on Netflix in 2020. So if you tweet at MagHub, whatever it is, the country and year, or just one of them, or, I don’t know, a picture of your favorite animal cracker, we’re pretty liberal in what we give prizes to, or just watch Animal Crackers and say what you thought, let us know and you might get a prize. Maybe Zach will come to your house and vacuum your floors. I don’t know. It could happen. Yeah.

Zach Gilbert:

Wow.

Tom Bellen:

That’s all I have right now. I mean do we want to talk more about the forums? Zach, do you want to plug anything that you’re doing right now? Are you doing any DJ stuff on the weekends?

Zach Gilbert:

No, can’t say. I’ll let Megan plug the forum again.

Megan Martin:

DJ stuff? I’m interested in that.

Zach Gilbert:

Doesn’t exist.

Megan Martin:

Of course. Yeah, so just a reminder, the fall forum is coming up. That’s September 20th to the 22nd. We’re going to be in Chicago, Illinois. And like I said, it’s coming up, guys. We’re getting really close. It’s just a few weeks away. The deadline for room discounts is actually this Friday, August 20th, so register as soon as you can. Again, we’re going to have a lot of fun stuff there. We’re going to have that one-on-one time with MagHub experts, we’re going to have uniquely curated breakout sessions on topics like sales, administration and finance, and production and subscriptions. And last but not least, we’re going to watch the Chicago Cubs versus the Minnesota Twins baseball game from a rooftop suite. So you do not want to miss out. Register as soon as you can.

Tom Bellen:

Twins are terrible.

Megan Martin:

Even better.

Tom Bellen:

Yeah, I mean but come on, Twins are just bad, but it’ll be fun. I’ve never been to Wrigley directly. I’ve been to a White Sox game, but I’ve never been north towards Wrigley. Ryan Sandberg was my favorite baseball player as a kid. Loved Ryan Sandberg. So got that going for me. Second baseman, Chicago Cubs. I’ll be there. I think I’m a little sad, Megan, that you didn’t say the most exciting thing is Tom’s Feature Freakout. I mean I don’t blame you, you’ve never experienced it. It’s a life-changing event, as Zach would say. Usually, he starts all his DJ situations talking about that, but that’s really what you need to look forward to. It’s the highlight of the forum.

Megan Martin:

Oh man, I can’t wait.

Zach Gilbert:

You can.

Tom Bellen:

At least that’s what my mom tells me. At least that’s what my mom tells me. All right, well on that depressing note, thank you all for listening, if you made it this far. And yeah, we’re excited to see you at the forum, and have a lovely rest of whatever part of the day when you listen to this is.

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