Ep. 22 - A Cut Above the Rest with Chris Conant | Devs:After Dark

It's emerging, you know, it's an emerging sport. I lived in San Diego for a while and started playing out there. It was pretty big, like the most— the busiest course in the world is out there, Morley Field.

I think people have been saying it's been an emerging sport for a very, very long time.

I don't know.

I don't know. For about 10 years.

Yeah, you know, I suppose I kind of feel like we'll get there.

Hello, hello, and welcome to Developers After Dark, episode number 22. We have a really, really awesome guest today. Friend, friend of the show, hopefully. We'll see. It depends on how— it depends on like how bad I, I do. But, um, yeah, no, this is going to be one of those ones where we get to talk to somebody who we've known, we've worked with. So it's going to be really special. But before we get into the introductions, let me really quickly just go over a couple of few things here. And obviously, you're listening or you're watching. So you know the website that everyone needs to go to, should go to, bookmark and always check. We just released a new episode. What was it, Dennis? Yesterday with Melinda Green, right? We put that one up live.

Wednesday.

Wednesday. Yep. So we've got that going. If you haven't seen that one, go check that one out as well. And of course, you— those are watching on YouTube, and you know, we're not— we're now streaming live on our YouTube channel with, uh, HubSpot Developers. So that's @HubSpotDevelopers. If you're, uh, if you haven't subscribed yet either, you should definitely do that because there's not just us. Let me just be very clear, don't just go there for us. I'd love you if you did, but, um, also too, you've got things dropping from Brooke Bond, John McLaren. Actually, Brooke just dropped a video yesterday. It's only a day old about how to secure your HubSpot CLI. with the new global configuration, which is something that just got announced not too long ago. And I know what you're saying. You're like, how do I keep up with all of this stuff, right? Because that's one of those things too where it's like drinking from the fire hose is not just like a clever little analogy that, you know, we throw around around here. It really is. There's a lot of information at once, but you can always check stuff out at the developers changelog. And that's going to be, for those on audio, developers.hubspot.com/changelog. And let me say it twice for Dennis. That's developers.hubspot.com/changelog.

Thank you.

I didn't even know we had one.

And you can subscribe to it. And not to mention, it also tells you about the upcoming things as well as the things that are happening just now or very recently. So you can do that as well. And then one more shout out that I definitely want to give, and that is to the Spring Spotlight Developer Tools. That's going to be developers.hubspot.com/ss25-dev-tools. If you go on that, Nice little page. You will find our friend Ricky, who was also a guest on the show, with a nice little video of him describing the developer tools overall when it comes to the Spring Spotlight. There's also a couple of other guests in that video as well. It's a really well-put-together video. Some video editor around here may have done that and posted that up there. You might see some shining faces that you might recognize from us.

Possibly.

Possibly. So go check that out as well, because then that also tells you everything that's going on from the improved app certifications to, I mean, app cards, which is a big thing right now for everybody. I know a little bit about that myself. So yeah, take a look at that as well. That's something you're definitely going to want to check out if you all— that's another way to keep up with everything going on. So with that out of the way, the reason why we're here, the reason why everyone is here listening, watching, Going to be talking about sharing after we're all done here is our guest, Chris. Chris, why don't you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

Hello, my name is Chris Conant. I am a solutions architect at Jasper AI, and I've been here for just about a year. In previous roles, well, I'll just add my HubSpot alum. I was at HubSpot for almost 8 years. Yeah, yeah. Started in 2014 and wrapped up in 2021. And then between 2021 and my time at Jasper, I went and tried to relearn marketing and worked for a startup and also was marketing director of marketing strategy for an awesome HubSpot agency called Rocca. I got to work with them for a while and they were just incredible. And yeah, kind of taking all of my learnings, I'm certainly a jack of all trades and always trying to kind of find cool solutions and ways to solve problems and taking all of like my marketing knowledge, my customer service knowledge, engineering knowledge, product knowledge, trying to bring that all together. I've really found a great fit. Here at Jasper as a solutions architect. So, um, yeah, really great to be here.

Now you mentioned having to relearn marketing. Was that something that, did that come easy to have to kind of re—

No, no. So like right outta school in, you know, 2008, 2009, I was working for a marketing agency out in San Diego and things were easier then, you know, like Keyword stuffing was still a thing. Like, it was very easy to rank.

The good old days of SEO, right?

Yeah, exactly. And you're just like, hey, I'm doing well. And that's all that really mattered.

The old white text on white background trick at the bottom just shoved into the page.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like, you know, and like, that was, that was great. But it was, it was very, it was narrow, you know, like the The whole digital marketing realm was quite narrow. And then stepping back into it a decade, 15 years later, it was eye-opening at just how many considerations. Additionally, how much software you just had to be aware of. And working in marketing for the startup, it was great because I got to choose my stack and work within that. But when I was working with the agency and just working with so many different customers on so many different stacks using so many different tools, I really gained a ton of respect for all of the marketing agencies out there. And of course, HubSpot partners that are doing this day in and day out and just the wealth of knowledge that is required to just be a marketing strategist these days. It's incredible. So yeah, um, and here I am at Jasper now taking all those findings and, uh, you know, working with, with enterprise companies to help implement AI and, and solve for them.

Can you talk more about that? What does Jasper actually do?

Yeah, so, uh, Jasper is a marketing-focused, uh, AI tool, and it really, uh, you know, it helps learn and discover as much about your brand your tone, sort of what your initiatives are. And then it takes that and uses that as a knowledge IQ layer to then just build better marketing content. And what I do here is help build custom solutions for a lot of our customers by understanding their needs and where their hyper-specific nuances and really working with them to not only build the instructions for Jasper's AI, but also to, to actually build solutions and integrate into their stacks and start to, you know, tie, tie all of those marketing tools together so that we're pulling the best context we can to create the best outputs we can, whether that's like strategic outputs or if it's actually, you know, marketing content that they're publishing.

Is it like bespoke marketing content? Like, is it like geared specifically like to a specific company or would it be more broad?

It's pretty broad. Yeah, it's very broad. What you can do within Jasper is it's really tailored towards enterprise companies. So it has an understanding that there's going to be different brands or business units within your organization, and it allows you to tailor or define those brands and those voices right within Jasper. And then basically to to your initial question, like the bespoke piece, like those little vectors towards each of those brands and solve at scale at once. So to add that logic and have it understand really the overall brand and what your initiative is, dare I say, sort of like getting into that agentic mindset.

Yeah.

Being able to sort of interpret and predict and not be so reactive.

Right.

But yeah, great question.

You mentioned building solutions to solve at scale. Now, I wanted to bring this up because, I mean, there's history here. Like, we have history. It's a good history. It's a good— I don't wanna make it sound like I got beef and I'm about to bring this up. But no, but at a certain point here at HubSpot, when I joined, I joined under, What I would consider a really good manager at the time, right? And that would happen to have been you.

Oh, interesting.

Like how I brought that in there? At the time there was, and it was, I mean, I would say for me it felt like it was in its infancy at the time, but the template marketplace, right? As helping building out a solution like that for people. Can you speak a little bit about that mindset as well? Because that was, I mean, And that's huge.

Yeah. I'll even back it up a little further if you don't mind to actually that marketing agency, that digital agency I was at before I joined HubSpot. I think I was young in my career and I really wanted to make an impact selfishly. And what I wanted to do was just like, I really had a dream of like, I wanna build something that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are using. What a great ambitious goal, right? And then what I realized pretty quickly is like, holy cow, when you build something like that, you have to account for how every one of those users will use that product.

Yeah.

And sometimes, wait, maybe I don't want that many people using it. But no, so that was always a dream. And when I got to HubSpot, I was originally on their migrations team from the old Orange boxes of the original CMS to the COS that they introduced in I think 2013, and we were migrating every website off the old CMS to the COS, which is now dubbed again the CMS. But you know, I was doing that and it was like so much fun, and I was working in the Portsmouth office of HubSpot at the time. It was small. I think there was like seven or eight of us. And we just were this little, almost like an agency within HubSpot that were turning and burning these migrated websites. And one of the gentlemen there, Sean Bristow, who is, I believe, still at HubSpot and doing his thing. Doing his thing. And he was sort of managing all of the template marketplace submissions. And I want to say When I took it over, there was something like 80 templates in the marketplace. And the backend was clearly an afterthought. I think even the marketplace itself from a GTM perspective and how customers interpreted it, they often didn't know about it. It was hidden deep in the product. It wasn't very easy to get to. And the products that were in it, were okay, but they weren't necessarily built for scale. They're sort of like very narrow-minded in a sense of like, I'm trying to solve this exact thing and I'm not thinking about how other people might use this. So Sean moved on to product management at HubSpot and there was sort of a gap left to who was going to to run and sort of take over his review process. And at the time, Chris Battis, who was the Director of Technical Services, sort of tapped me on the shoulder. And I was like, hey, is this something you'd want to handle? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I started to look at it. And Chris and I were riffing one day. And we put together these, like, requirements. We're like, hey, you know what? We should probably build our, like, requirements around what these templates need to adhere to.

Wait, wait. So, like, prior to this, there was— you could just upload a template without any type of requirement whatsoever?

I'm gonna say I don't know, but I don't believe there were requirements. They weren't like— 2 things. If there were, you know, they were pretty lightweight. And second piece is there was no validation within the product that would, you know, look at any of those nuances or— requirements. So fast forward a bit, we started to build these requirements, and we actually, since there was such a light number of submissions at the time, we made everyone resubmit their assets so that they would be up to par with those requirements. Some people didn't like it, some people didn't do it, but what we got out of that were a number, you know, we were able to sort of publicize this and send out emails to development partners and say like, hey, we have this thing, we have new requirements. If you want to submit, they'll now have to follow these guidelines. That was like the— I'll call that V1, moving on from V0 to V1. It worked really well. Then Sean and team realized that the template marketplace product itself behind the scenes was very antiquated. outdated and there's just a lot of room for improvement. So they built an entirely new backend to the marketplace and that allowed us to actually have a proper management channel where we had a dashboard that we could manage submissions out of and approve templates and all those things. And at the time we were working with Jeffrey Bossel, who was in product Product marketing management, and he helped sort of like pull the developer side together at the time that was much in its infancy, the marketplace and all of this into a single space, which is now you know has evolved into what the developers HubSpot is, and that was where the marketplace requirements were and all of that. And that worked like really, really well, and until we had our next opportunity, which was when. we introduced custom modules v2 along with sort of transitioning the design manager from the drag-and-drop blocks that we all hated to actually having a proper IDE within the platform. And with that, you know, we were able to support so much more. Oh, that was another thing. We couldn't support custom modules in templates in the marketplace. So then when we released that, it was like, hey, now we have sort of the art of the possible where you can build all of the custom modules you want for these very specific needs and you can include them in templates and you can post them on the marketplace.

Right.

So it was really great to see the marketplace at that point. And shout out to Sean and Bill Goodrich and that team that really— and Matt Furtado, of course. They took that and they were like, hey, like let's make this a first-class citizen. Bill did a really great write-up. Gosh, this was probably like 2015 or so, 2016, of like how the marketplace beforehand was sort of like a duct taped ship that was barely afloat, and they rebuilt it into you know a superyacht, and they did such a great job. And once they rebuilt the entire system that time to account for all of the modules and all of that work. That's when we also began to start like automating some of the validation and removing the human element from it. Oh, and I'd be remiss to say that we also, I think we're some of the first people to use the HubSpot CRM and that's how we were tracking all of the submissions. So it was great to sort of drink our own champagne in that regard there.

Am I wrong? The app marketplace already existed, correct?

I don't think so.

No, this is pre-app market. Oh, I didn't know.

Yeah, yeah, the template marketplace was first and then the app marketplace came after, and then the other revamp of—

I see. Yeah, that makes more sense to me now.

Okay, let me ask you, let me ask you, Chris, with those first set of requirements, right, that Where everybody had to resubmit. How hard was it to— because I mean, this, this usually comes up just in, in about every like requirement we, you know, anyone tries to implement on anything, right? This isn't just like theme specific, but how hard was it to kind of balance that, that kind of thing where you don't— you want to still enable the creativity, but you also don't want to stifle them to the point where the requirements are kind of forcing them into a certain way of developing. Was that hard? I mean, I know it's hard just in general, but did that really kind of, you know, poke its head out at that point because these were the first kind of set of ones that were being created?

Yeah, yeah, it did. And there was definitely a level of frustration. And I don't want to— I guess frustration can be the right word where sometimes the developers just didn't quite understand why there was pushback. And if I went back, hindsight is such 20/20, but if I went back to when I created those requirements, what I would do now is probably have explanations under each one as to why that requirement is there. I mean, some of them are pretty obvious, but when you start to think about positioning this sounds so basic, but it was one that was really weird, is positioning the submit button of a form in line with the last form field. And people would be like, hey, why can't we do that? And I was like, well, if you use a select or something, you're kind of using absolute positioning and then it will break and blow out. And they were like, oh, I didn't think about that.

Yeah.

And it's like, of course. Most people wouldn't because you haven't crossed that scenario before. But From my seat, I was able to not only see—

Right, yeah.

What every developer was creating, but also how these customers were using it. And I'd be receiving that feedback generally firsthand via through support channels or from folks reaching out. And then I was able to like sort of look into it, inspect what was going on and identify the issue. And then from there often would, you know, update requirements to account for those issues.

Do you feel like this would've been as successful if it was a more mature marketplace? I mean, this seems like it'd be, it's a lot of handholding in my opinion, right? Like you need to have some conversations, which is you can do with 80, you know, templates. But once it gets larger, does this scale at all?

So it's a, it's a really great question. And I think if we didn't have the CRM at that point, we wouldn't have been able to because essentially what we were able to do at that point is automate most of it just to, if something required edits, quickly being able to put those in. But I think if the developer advocacy wasn't there, we were literally just trying to advocate for the marketplace itself and how you can build a business around that marketplace. Because there were, even when there were such a light number of templates in the marketplace, a few providers that were still, you know, they had— that was their job, their full-time job. And it was— they were certainly profitable. But I think if there was that sort of developer advocacy program to really highlight how things should be built at scale or why they should be built at scale or those considerations and, you know, what you all have done over the past years, like, it would've been easier, but we were just charting our own course.

Yeah.

That wasn't just the marketplace itself, but even early on, I don't think we had any necessarily direction from leadership to go do this. We just saw it as an opportunity. We were basically building these templates every day or migrating them, these websites from the old to the new. And this just seemed like The next logical step to help with that is like, we saw a lot of the sites that were getting migrated, they were, they were old, they were outdated, they weren't responsive, you know, even when we would add Bootstrap to it and give some responsiveness, it still didn't always work. There were images that were hardcoded to certain widths, etc. You guys, you went through it all, you know, like, we went from a world of everything needed to be pixel perfect to with responsive design, there was like a little bit of wiggle room. You know, done is better than perfect. Yeah.

So what I'm hearing is Dennis and AJ should have started at HubSpot earlier, and Chris should have had a technical program manager who likes to use Loom way too much and not work in real estate for 10 years drowning in ridiculous tasks all day.

I remember way back when We were redoing the Marketplace guidelines. I want to say it was, I want to say it was like, uh, 2019, 2020-ish.

It was.

After I came aboard, it was you, me, and, uh, Victoria Elliott.

Yeah.

The 3 of us were kind of hammering through like a big document of like, how do we update these terms? And like you said, like, we had the bullet points, but like, how do we expand on them to let people know why? And like, why these certain Things need to happen.

That, that was probably the most pivotal point, uh, from a developer perspective at HubSpot. I, I believe it was, yeah, like October of 2019. I had just come back from parental leave. Themes were launching, and with that we also supported CLI, uh, and that's sort of like when the develop the DevRel team was being formed, essentially. You and John, I think, originally.

Yeah, me, John, Zach, David. I can't remember. I think it was us originally and then Elizabeth and then Ramona.

Yep.

Awesome.

Yeah.

And at that time, I was still involved in the marketplace, but I had also For about a year at that point, been working on a team that was formed that we called, at the time it was Design Assets. Then I think it became, I don't even know what it's called now, if it exists. It was Content Assets at one point. And then—

So many acronyms.

Yeah. But we had the Design Assets team and there was a few of us on that team and we were basically building out-of-the-box solutions at scale. So I finally got my dream to to build solutions that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people could use. And that's when I realized like, oh, this isn't necessarily what I love to do because there's so much nuance with it. We'd be getting these mocks for templates and we'd be looking over and be like, wow, this is so cool. These features are amazing. We're like, wait, but how are people going to use this? And we're like, okay, let's scale it back and scale it back and sort of water it down a little bit more to sort of remove and omit some of those hyper-specific features. But yeah, that is when we went to— we worked on the boilerplate. Well, design assets split into 2 teams. There was design assets, and I think it probably got renamed to content assets because it split into developer assets as well.

Mm-hmm.

And that was sort of like the initial split, I think, of focusing on development side. And then the entire— I don't even know the name of it now, obviously. But there's like an entire developer-specific engineering org, product engineering org. And that obviously, that one team evolved into that. So that was pretty cool. But it definitely was wild as well to really think about like how to build for scale and everything.

Yeah.

I learned from the marketplace and bringing that into practice and actually Developing those templates.

Nick, I gotta ask you, I mean, you, you're in a pretty disruptive place right now at the Marketplace and all that good stuff. Have you, have you learned anything from Chris here, or, uh, did you fail and should we just get rid of you now?

Yeah, no, I, I mean, just kind of taking up space, really. I mean, didn't really learn much. No, I'll be honest, I, I, uh, Chris was pretty instrumental in when I first got here because there— okay, when I first got here, there was I didn't— I never worked at a place this big, right? So that right away, it's like 2 different worlds, right?

Mm-hmm.

The acronyms, the— like, I had certain ways of, like, describing things and talking about things, which I'm sure, like, I'm sure drove Chris nuts because, like, I would be trying to explain something and it was like— and not that real estate is a completely different language, but, like, in a small place without a dev server with, like, I was literally making changes live and, like, knocking people out of their sessions, like, Because I had no other choice, right? Like when I was developing. So it was—

Nothing wrong with that.

Right?

Yeah.

Like that's, you know, uh, not, not the best thing. I wouldn't recommend it. But, but no, it was a— it was— there was a definite, like, it was almost like there was a language barrier there. And like, but Chris was just an amazing person at being able to kind of decipher that and then kind of put me— like, really, it was one of those, this is what you need to do, give it a shot, see See if you can do it, and then come back to me with questions. So I was able to actually, like, there wasn't, there was, I mean, everybody has training wheels to a certain extent, but like, I was able to actually get my hands in there and start messing with stuff, which is kind of the way I like to learn. So like, Chris was really, he was able to accommodate that type of thing, like, kind of effortlessly, you know what I mean? And it put like, I mean, hey, you put a lot of trust in me at the very beginning. I mean, that could have failed miserably, miserably. But it didn't. But no, but it's just one of those things where it's like you have somebody who's like your manager at that time that's put like week 1 instilling that much kind of faith in you knowing that there's, there's what you came from is not exactly apples to apples and what you're trying to do. And, you know, just kind of instilled that, which is like something that to this day, you know, I couldn't ask for anything different. So it's quite an amazing thing. And like everything you've been saying about the template marketplace has been like, Everything we've done now, even up to this point, it's been the same thing. Like, not too recently, we revamped— we didn't revamp, but we kind of reworded. We added more things in. Like you were saying, the example of explaining why someone should do this, we actually started embedding actual YouTube videos from the HubSpot Developers channel straight into the documentation. I mean, very charismatic person we picked for all those videos. Thumbs up, Dennis. I really like that. But I mean, it explained a lot of things. Brand inheritance, color, pulling in those colors and things about just how it gets delivered is not exactly in the same place to a user as the developer seeing. And even some of those things, even some of— not even the newer people building in the template marketplace, either it slipped their mind or it wasn't something that they were even thinking about. So it was like one of those things where they could see why we're asking for things the way we do and why we're so strict about certain things. So, like, everything you've been talking about has just been built upon. And, like, so it wasn't like one of these things where we'll just try this. Like, it was really well thought out at the very, very beginning. And to build on that was very easy. Of course, as technology is getting better and as, you know, new things get introduced like AI. So, yeah, overall, it's like, you know, I know it sounds like I'm kissing up to that. Yeah.

Did you just create the highlight reel for Chris to take back to his boss? I did that.

And your review, Chris, just we'll Snip this part out and you can just like take that.

But it's true.

It is all true. Yeah, it is all true.

Pay the man.

No, but it's, yeah, no, it's absolutely true, all of it. So it's one of those things where not everybody gets to move along that process with that much support and that much like well-thought-out aspects of things. And those who do, who have experienced it, know and are like, You try to emulate that, right? Like, I, everything I try to do now, I try to emulate that where I'm like, yeah, here it is. Let, you know, you can do it. Let's try to do it. So it's, um, yeah, it's one of those things that you really can't, can't manufacture that. For sure.

You know, I, I've, I realized I had sort of an epiphany this, this past week when I was explaining something that I've done a few times. I was like, oh, turns out I have a playbook. And I was like, shoot, I have a playbook, man.

I'm getting old.

I have my own playbook.

Awesome.

How, how has this all translated over to your new job? Like, what were you able to take with you and what'd you, I know you had to relearn the whole marketing business, but I'm assuming there are some playbooks that you were able to, you know, modify.

Yeah. And like, that's one of the great things about HubSpot, I think. And again, when I started, it was like a landing page tool essentially. And to see how HubSpot has evolved. Product supports and the ecosystem it's built. But what's great about HubSpot as a product is, you know, going back to what I said about like how wide the marketing stack has become and how many tools you have to account for, HubSpot accounts for a lot of those tools within, within the product itself.

Yep.

And, and having access to all of that and understanding the relationships between that data. is really instrumental because I can take that and go to another organization that needs help with automation, needs, you know, these AI integrations. And I can look at their entire stack and say, cool, we need the data points from these applications and we need to pull them together. And from that, you're going to get the result that you need. And what's wild, and I'm not trying to, you know, sit here and toot my own horn in any way, But you see this sort of aha face come up on customers that are like, oh my gosh, if I had all of that in one place, I could actually do what I need to do. And so yeah, it's just, you know, it really goes back to like any system is only as good as the data within that system. And I think, you know, there's a lot to be said about that and sort of training people on how to store good data and quality data.

Yeah.

Use that. So I don't know if that, that—

No, no, no. That's a great answer.

With a plug to HubSpot, of course, cuz I think, I really do think the product is incredible. And still, I mean, still—

When you went, when you went for your marketing job to HubSpot, did you have a really good conception of all these connection points or was it your time at HubSpot where you evolved into understanding how all this kind of works together?

I'd say a little bit of both, but more on, I learned a lot at HubSpot. And I say a little bit of both because like I had an understanding, but I think that the overall like technology at that point, Salesforce was still like established product, but nowhere near where it is today. So like CRMs weren't as mature as they are. CMSs certainly weren't as mature as they are now. You know, like I think even 2013, 2014 WordPress and those, you still needed to know some markup at least to like really get in there and utilize it. Where today you, you can have basically no development chops whatsoever and successfully navigate most CMSs, et cetera. And then like, of course, all of the insights software and all of that. Mm-hmm. Google Analytics is sort of like what you used and Google Webmaster Tools, which I think became Search Console essentially, or sort of broke into some analytics and Search Console. Those were the tools you were using. There weren't as many tools out there. I'm sure Semrush probably was around. I don't know when it was introduced, but that wasn't a name you heard every day or any of the like of those sort of tools. Project management software, there was some, I think, but like Jira was sort of it. Whereas now, you know, when you think about project management software, there's just like so many.

Right, right.

So it's an evolution as the technology and the industry evolves. I'm trying to stay up with it, just like I'm sure y'all are with every technology here. But yeah, I have a decent understanding, but I was also in my 20s. I thought I knew more than I did.

Everybody does though, I get your point, right? That's always— let me ask you, speaking about that timeframe, like when you first— like what was one of the first things then that kind of sparked your interest in technology in general?

Oh, I've just always been intrigued by just like the internet. I think, and at a young age in grade school, maybe middle school, maybe high school, I think I built my first website on like Angelfire or Geocities or something. And then like, it just went from there. I was like, cool, how can I keep making things better? And I always sort of treated it as a hobby, which I'm glad I did because I— Hobbies excite me. And it wasn't until I realized, I was like, hey, this development thing's kind of fun and maybe there's something there. I wouldn't— I still today don't strike myself as like a great developer by any means. I tend to always focus on the problem at hand and figure out how to solve that. Whereas I'm not like, I'm deep into these languages and doing these things. More so, okay, what do we need to do to get this done and how can we do that? I think once you— I'm sure just like you all, how to develop it is— how to actually execute the development is one thing, but understanding what you're trying to solve for and the logic behind it is really where I like to sit and translate between You know, customer needs and an engineering team and being able to sort of communicate and sort of draw the bridge between the two.

Right.

Because it's always easy to get those horse blinders where you're just so like focused on it and then you miss the connections. So, but yeah, no, I'm sorry, Dennis, I cut you off.

No, no, I'm just worrying now in the world of AI and I, you say you're not deep into these languages, but you have a great understanding of what the customer needs and basically the framework, right? Have—

has—

you seem like you would be good with AI coding, whereas, you know, like the typical vibe coder doesn't know. They're just kind of building vibely, you know.

It's—

do I utilize and leverage AI for coding? Absolutely. Um, but I'm not like, hey, go build this entire program and I don't know what you're doing. And like the whole like concept of vibe coding, I think is intriguing and it's wild. And like to see that people have found success in it, that have never coded before is neat and scary. I think it's scary for all of us because we're like, oh shoot, we actually do understand development, we do code, and we do these things. If someone's doing that, but in this chapter of AI, it's very easy to poke holes in that and say, oh, you're not accounting for these things.

Right.

The rate that AI is just increasing, improving, I think it's only a matter of time till we have— it's the same thing with the Will Smith eating spaghetti video from 2 years ago. Now, you know, like, oh my God, it's— yeah, like, my uncle—

We're in the show notes, I believe. Somebody's episode mentioned him and put it in the show notes, so I figured why not.

Yeah, my uncle at Thanksgiving was like, oh, you know, the AI with 10 fingers. And I was like, yes, you haven't been following, but you are correct that 3 years ago.

Yeah.

You know, and there's— but what AI is capable of today is great. What I think is just so intriguing to me, and really just, I still can't grasp, is just the rate that it's increasing and evolving and changing. And, you know, almost to a point where I start to look at Engineering and the amount of effort to engineer something, or can you hedge a bet that AI is going to account for that before you could actually complete and execute?

Yeah.

Problem.

So like, it's this back and forth balance of, of where do we want to lean and, you know, where do we want to focus our time and resources? And, uh, that's, that's a question that I, I'm always sort of weighing out, you know, like, oh, do we have to think about how We might need to break up this prompt or this context so that it can all be interpreted by the language model, or do we want to wait 2 weeks for Gemini to release something new where it can interpret all of this in one sweep?

Yeah.

It's not an issue.

Right.

But go ahead.

Yeah. Oh, no. I was going to say I was going to derail the conversation for a second because I want to— you mentioned about the— you liked the fact that it was a hobby first. And I wanted to give you a shout out because there's something that you used to do when you were working at HubSpot when I first got there. And that was the ability to like, you would do these kind of like hobby videos, remember, where you would like show off. And I thought that was—

to this day, I still use that to test whether or not a knife is sharp. Wait, what?

That one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Back up, back up, back up.

Let me just explain why I brought this up because it's like, I thought that was a really cool thing because it was very— the human side of things. Because like, again, I came to a place where it was really massive. Like you're talking thousands of people versus like a room of 10 people. Like I worked with other teams, but let's face it, the other team would be like me leaning back and like, you know, asking the person like 2 cubicles down. That was the other team. This was like— It was so massive and it felt like, well, at least at first, right? The perception was it was— everything was so impersonal because it was so— because you're trying to learn all of these things. So at the same time, it's like, yeah, you're trying to remember these people's names. You're trying to like, oh, this person seems nice, so that person can help me in this and that. But it was like, that wasn't the focus. The focus was like, okay, let me go back and remember the 50 acronyms somebody just said to me that I know about maybe one, you know? And Chris did this thing where it was like, And I'll let you explain, and I don't want to steal all the—

No, by all means, keep going with it. Your memory is better than mine.

But no, it was, it was just really cool because you had this where— and I can't remember, there were other people that did it as well on the, on the team at the time— but it was, you know, you just, you picked a hobby or you picked something that was, you know, you're passionate about. You did like a, I don't know, let's say like a 10-15 minute video on it. And I was just like, when the first time I saw that, I was like, oh, okay, there's You know, because you always hear, like, AJ would always tell me, like, and at first I thought he was lying, like, all the time. He's like, no, HubSpot cares about the employee. And I'm like, yeah, every company says they care about the employee. I've heard that, like, believe me, I've heard that a million times, right? But, like, seeing that, and then that started to make me, unfortunately, AJ, sorry, I didn't believe you. But, like, it wasn't until stuff like that where I was like, oh, okay, maybe he's onto something. Because, like, why would Chris even spend time doing this if this was, like, something where it was like, You don't work, you're not working for that 15 minutes. Like, why aren't you? You know what I mean? Like, like that year I did agency work where it was like I always have to mark down every 5 minutes of what I was doing. I was like, oh, there's actually like synergy here. There's camaraderie. There's like, that was different. And like stuff like that really stood out to me and probably will for the rest of my life because it, it was just, it was impactful. Uh, and like, what did you, was that something that you always did or was that just something where?

Well, I think you were sort of on a new frontier of HubSpot because if I recall correctly, did you start in early 2021 or?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So HubSpot was still trying to figure out this whole remote piece where we were still feeling the effects of COVID I don't think the vaccines are out yet. So I don't believe the offices were open. So you joined a new version of HubSpot than what had existed previously with these great offices where there was such strong culture. And I think we all were trying to figure out how do we carry that culture and that vibe that HubSpot had built and done such an incredible job building in office. And bring that to the remote work. And it's a balance, right? Like, okay, we don't want to just like sync a few times a week and get Zoom fatigue. We tried that. It did happen. So we basically tried to give everyone on the team a voice and pick a hobby or something either that is work-related or isn't work-related and sort of just present on it and give your take on it. And Yeah, I did the knife sharpening. Mitch Katz did glassblowing, I believe. I was so intrigued by his glassblowing skills. Cool. And yeah, Amanda, our designer, I think she talked about— it was so intriguing. They're like creating fonts or something wild. It was so amazing. She was doing it all on the iPad drawing and I was like blown away. But it really just tried to— we were trying to open up the opportunity to sort of learn about each other without just being like, oh yeah, so what do you do in your free time? And, you know, like the same things that we all do on Zoom day in and day out and just sort of—

How's the weather? How's that?

Yeah.

So cool though. Like you got to see a side of somebody that like you didn't normally see. And like I said, like literally still to this day, like we'll have a knife and I'll just be like, nope, it's not sharp. We gotta sharpen it. Like, what are you doing? And I was like, you remember?

In all honesty, when the minute you started doing that, like, like, like literally as you were showing us this thing, I was messaging AJ and I'm like, dude, Is this for real? Like, are we really like, this is— and it wasn't like, not to be like this guy, what? No, but I was kind of just blown away by just the concept of this. Because again, like previous work experience in different vertical, it was like 24/7. Like, I don't care if it's 2 in the morning, I'm calling you. This website's got to be put up because the loan went through on whatever. But it was like, this was such a different— I was just really blown away by it. And it like, it kind of like reshaped the way I thought about work. Because I'll be honest, like I always thought about work, it was just like, Grind, grind, grind, you know, like whatever it takes. And the work-life balance didn't exist, right? But then I started to see stuff like this and I was just like, okay, I need to start changing my— this isn't going to fly here. And it shouldn't, right? Because no one should really. That's not like healthy at all. But no, that was one of those things. I was messaging him during the whole thing. I'm like, I'm like, I got to find something cool because I look lame now because everybody's got this, you know what I mean? And I was like, but it was cool. It was.

I got to grab every kitchen knife that I have. Like, is this working? Like, are they all dead?

Dennis, we need to fill you in because I feel like—

I did not— I mean, I don't know how I, I don't recall this. I was here before Nick was, and I don't even remember any of this happening ever. Was this like team-specific or was it—

It was team-specific. Yeah, so, so Nick was, was technically on like within our little ecosystem on product and engineering, um, within the marketplace side. But yeah, A COVID hobby of mine was— well, to back up, I've always enjoyed Anthony Bourdain. I've read his books and whatnot. And he always talks about knife sharpening and these things. And I was like, hey, you know, I'm gonna buy a couple like nice knives. So I bought some and then they went dull after a while. And I was like, well, I have a lot of time on my hands during COVID I'm going to learn how to sharpen knives and got into that whole realm. Cutting my own knives. And then I put a video together about it and the hobby that I had picked up during COVID presented to, to our teams.

What I'm getting out of this picture, you're preparing blacksmith, just like hammering swords. Wow, really? What I'm getting out of this was you're just preparing to go to prison and, you know, be frozen.

Let me see if I can stop my cam. There we go. Oh, I thought I was gonna get my camera working.

I mean, it's not a bad freeze actually. So, uh, no, you got smiling.

Yeah, no, it was one of those things where, yeah, I just felt like I really need to change my, uh, not philosophy, but I really needed to change the way I kind of did things as far as like that work-life balance. So it was, uh, yeah, no, it was a really nice eye-opener to kind of have happen. Uh, just because of the fact, like, you kind of get stuck. Like, I don't know, you kind of get stuck sometimes, right? You get in this kind of where it's like, okay, especially if you have like a, depending on what your job is, right? You may have a certain amount of tasks, right? That, you know, you have to accomplish and it might be a bit repetitive.

Mm-hmm.

But like to have that kind of break in the monotony was like really, um, I don't know, it's just something like people attempt to do stuff like that and, you know, you know, maybe they try it and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But this was one of those things that really Like I said, it stood out so much so that it was like one of those things that I just kind of, I don't, I try to never forget because it like really does make you kind of like with Caitlin in the, you know, being more human when you're talking on Slack. It was like one of those things where it was like, don't forget to breathe and be normal for a minute. So, but no, again, that's—

Do you think that's the new work-life balance? Like, you know, our parents, I'm just, Blanket statement, but our parents, like, at the end of the day, their workday, they essentially just like removed themselves from work and were able to focus on—

Literally.

Their life. Whereas now with the digital pres— you know, the presence of the internet, you know, the fact that everything's on our phone, which is generally in our pocket all the time, and those things, like, the work-life balance is less about time constraints and more about how you just approach work and how much of a human you can be.

Yeah, no, I think that's great.

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, because I don't see how you separate the two now. Like, when you said that, the best example I can think of is like, yeah, I would love to— because, you know, usually one of the questions we'll ask every once in a while is, you know, if you could pick a job or something that had— that was as less— as least techie as possible, like, what would that be? Or if, you know, like a hobby that's least techie. And it's really hard to answer those questions because, like, just me personally, I With the phone, like my blood— like right now, like, and I know this is very, very specific, and if you're not a diabetic, it like absolutely has— you might not have any idea. But, um, both the way I can check my blood sugar and give myself insulin is all through my phone now. So even if I wanted to, like, I'm gonna turn the phone off and I'm gonna— I can't. Like Dennis can attest, I can't turn the phone off or else it starts going nuts telling me that it's lost connection. Like I can't.

Sure.

Like, so it's While it's a blessing because it makes life so much easier, it's also a curse because it's now I am locked to that phone.

I've like—

when I used to just check my blood—

Is that real? I mean, that seems like such a— like, what if your phone dies? Like, how do you— are you, are you dead as well?

It's one of those things where it's like, you, you know, you can still check your, your blood sugar through your fingers. Like, you know, prick your finger, put the blood drop on there and stuff. But I check it More now with the phone. It's almost like when people have that like social media addiction where it's like, oh, I'm just gonna see what they posted, or I'm gonna see what they— I do the same thing now with looking at my blood sugar. Like when we do the episode, sometimes I may do it like 3 or 4 times, like just within the hour of chat. Like where before, if I didn't have that, I would have to like go physically put the blood on there and be like, oh, now it's, it's really hard to separate that like from technology. And it's like, and it's hard to say no to it because it makes life so much easier. But then at the same time, you're You're giving up something in that exchange, right? You're saying, well, now I— and like you said, Dennis, that, that example is like, yeah, if that phone goes, go like goes dead, I have to like scramble and like figure out another— I have backups and like, yeah, it's, it's kind of wonky.

But, uh, the difference though is like, that's your life, whereas work is, you know, you should be able to separate yourself from your 9 to 5, right? Like that, turning off the phone for that should not kill you.

For me though, I'm one of those people though where like an idea pops in my head at like 11:30 at night. And, and I mean, you guys have been there. I've messaged you guys and I've been like, don't respond. We've been there.

Yeah. We've been there.

And then like, yeah. So like that to me, like I enjoy it only for the fact of like the, the good ideas that I have. And let's face it, they're probably not all good. But the ideas that I do have, like I can quickly, like, I, I Slack myself so many times throughout the day and that, that's gonna sound horrible on audio only, but I do. And it's just like, it's, it's the only way I can remember things half the time. It's, it's like a running task list almost. Like it, to me, it's like you can't live without it.

I, I like that you Slack yourself. Uh, I tend to just write like conversation for tomorrow. And I sent it to my boss, Kevin O'Day, also HubSpot alum. And I'm sure he's sick of getting like the 1:00 AM Slack messages that are like, hey, I came up with this idea.

Or I like schedule the message and I write in parentheses ahead of time, like scheduled message, right? Just so people know, like, hey, don't respond to this because I'm probably not going to respond.

You mentioned, Chris, you mentioned Bill's name. The one time Bill actually, when I first started, Bill actually like Messaged me back, uh, Goodrich, and he said, you know, you could schedule these, right? You don't have to post these at like— because he saw the time of it was like 11 o'clock. And I was like, I was just thinking of something. He's like, you realize you could just schedule these for 9 AM. You don't have to like—

I was like, I don't want this now.

Yeah.

I'm like, I'm like, oh yeah, I should probably, you know, I guess it's that mindset where it's like I get calls at 2 in the morning at the last job and I'm thinking like, oh, it's just no one's good. I'm like, yeah, you know, I should just wait. It's not that. So yeah, it's, it's— is there anything that you do that kind of like, because You said like the separation isn't really, it's more of like being able to like manage it and balance it. Is there anything that you do or was there a certain point where you said like, yeah, okay, I'm, you know, there's too much and I have to like kind of not be, you know, on call 24/7 with that mentality?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think just like, well, sort of 2 things. Um, the understanding that If you acknowledge that message, 2 things are most likely gonna happen. If it's like non-urgent, 2 things are gonna happen. You're gonna forget about it the next day and it's gonna slip through the cracks. Or if you read it, like you're not gonna do anything with it. So if you can understand those pieces of it, it's a lot easier to sort of get ahead of like, like Nick, curious, how many times when you go to check your blood sugar on your phone, do you also find yourself in Slack? You're like, oh, just let it happen. You know, I suddenly made it into Slack. Like, it's not like messages, like, right? Breaking those habits and just getting ahead of it and trusting that you're not needed. And if you were needed, someone would make sure to find a way to contact you. But like, we're all sort of doing, you know, revenue and operations work. We're not, we're not sitting here in the medical field where if something goes sideways, people's lives are at risk. And I think if we remember that, while our jobs are all very important, but like, if we remember that, it allows us to think, hey, our, our lives outside of work are also very important. Our families are important. Our hobbies are important. Sharpening knives is important. You know?

Well, I mean, I, I call Nick all the time and he doesn't even pick up, so I'm surprised to hear that he actually looks at other messages.

I mean, there's other reasons for that, but yeah, sure, we can blame it on that.

That's fine.

That's fine. Let me, uh, let me change gears a little bit because, um, I wanna— I don't wanna keep you over too late because I, again, there's that— we could talk for hours about this.

Oh yeah.

And I would, I absolutely would. But I think people just— it's, it's hard to— it's hard to keep things, you know, it's, it's hard to like try to follow a path of questions and not want to like just— because there's so much good stuff. And, but, but I also do want to know a little bit more about like you and Like, I know a little bit about you, but like, for those that are listening, like, like, who is Chris like when he's not working? Like, what are some of your— like, I mean, we know about the— we know about the sharpening. And so we— I kind of jumped the shark on that one a little bit. But like, outside of work, like, what does— like, what are some of the other things that kind of just take you away from it?

Well, I will first say I have taken a step back from sharpening knives. One of my friends, Andrew, over at Atlas Lures is a great knife sharpener, and now he handles all my knives.

But I love lures.

Yeah, yeah.

Like fishing.

He does fishing lures as well. Yeah, he makes knives and lures.

That's awesome.

Checking out. He does some really cool things. But I live in New Hampshire on the seacoast of New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston, in a town called Rollinsford. Got a 5-year-old daughter who is amazing, an incredible wife who supports me. And, you know, has always been right behind me in all of my sort of wild ideas and endeavors. And You know, outside of sort of the day-to-day of trying to build solutions for folks or for myself, I love being outside, play a lot of disc golf, a lot with— it's been a minute, but I try to play as much with Byron Mato as possible. He's a great disc golf player and just amazing person.

Is that big? Is that big out there? There's not a lot of Here there isn't that many at all.

It's emerging, you know, it's an emerging sport. I lived in San Diego for a while and started playing out there. It was pretty big, like the most— the busiest course in the world is out there, Morley Field.

Chris, I think people have been saying it's been an emerging sport for a very, very long time.

I don't know, I've been playing for about 10 years.

Yeah, you know, I suppose I kind of feel like We'll get there.

I think in Nixon's speech, he mentioned something about that, about it being emerging at one point.

But no, I think trendline in bowling is it eventually will catch up to be like a really, really popular thing way in the future.

Nothing's, nothing's gonna be pickleball. Let's face it, nothing's gonna take fire like pickleball. No.

Yeah. But I play, play a bunch of music. You know, I've recently gotten back into that. Dennis, I see you got your guitar back there. And I've never Am I guessing that's an Ibanez?

It's a Gibson back there. Then behind that there is a custom-made banjo.

Oh, nice. Yeah, mine are all sort of hiding over here. There's one and then there's some more. Um, but yeah, I've been trying to play, play with folks again, uh, which has been great. You know, I found some, some other dads that are sort of in the same, same space as myself and Understand that we can't necessarily get together every week and it's always when the stars align. But, but yeah, a lot of that stuff and try to be outside with the family as much as possible. Finally getting warm here in New Hampshire.

So when were you safe saying, uh, with other dads? When did you become comfortable saying that yourself?

So I turn 40 next month. I'd say like 38, I felt pretty comfortable.

That sounds about right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, now have you hit full dad mode where like you can fall asleep anywhere? Because I have totally hit that.

I have 100% hit that.

If I were to like lay back and close my eyes now, I guarantee you I'd fall asleep in like 10 minutes.

Like, I'm close. Like, I, I, I might be like approaching midlife crisis where I'm trying to like be active and energetic and then, and healthy. Um, I'm getting there, you know, that's emerging as well and has been the past decade, but hey.

That's—

yeah. One quick thing, Dennis. Uh, why did I spend money on an intro song if you can play the guitar? Like, why, why didn't you mention that you could have just written a song for us to be that?

Well, that's— we'll talk about that later on.

Yeah, I just, I'm just throwing it out there just to shame you because that's a bit—

but actually, AJ had a great idea. We have a bunch of musicians in the developer, uh, network, and we should perhaps, uh, get some community support on that.

So this is what you have to do. If you— I don't know if it still exists on the wiki, but back in when just like before Two Canal in Cambridge or any of the Canal, when it was just Davenport, I'm pretty sure there was a full like band setup in the product and engineering space.

No way.

I would not be surprised by that. There are so many, and I still say this, there are so many developers that I have either like talked with or have met where like the majority of them are musicians on the side. And that's— it's so unique to like see that. So like, like me, I, I just started lessons last March, I want to say, is when I started taking them. And like, I am nowhere near comfortable to even like play with other people because I just feel like I'm gonna be bad.

Like, right?

Yeah, yeah, I've got, I've got the main chords down. And then, you know, I think I'm on like the absolute beginner level of finding songs on like Ultimate Guitar or something like that, like just getting a bunch of chords together. So my teacher Mike, that was awesome. He's like totally about like '90s music too. And yeah, it's, it's been interesting learning though because it's so technical that I feel like it is like I'm coding in a way when I'm playing.

Wow.

So I was just gonna say, like, theoretically it's all math, you know?

Yeah, yeah, so crazy. Yeah.

Well, you mentioned if you're, uh, you're looking for any new hobbies, um, I, uh, as an old man and a dad now myself, uh, building things out of PVC pipe. I don't know why. Like, I just all of a sudden, like, I did one thing. I literally, I built, like, I rebuilt my pool filter out of PVC. 'Cause you know, it's usually like the default tubes that always break. So I just like one day I sat on the floor at, I believe it was either Lowe's or Home Depot and just started like drawing out like the thing. And they must, they thought I was nuts. 'Cause like, I like to go shopping late at night. I like to go to the store late at night. Like AJ can attest. Like I literally, that's my therapy. Like I just go, I, you know, and I walk around with the earphones on.

Yeah.

But I literally sat down on the floor of like Home Depot, I think it was, and I just started like almost like A Beautiful Mind. I was just sitting there putting like all these, like, and every— there's a place like, you need help? I was like, no, I'm actually—

I'm good.

Like, and, uh, when I— yeah, I do need help. But once I did that, I started building like Halloween stands for like, you know, like, uh, like statues, like, like puppets and stuff like that for like— I just started building everything out of like PVC because it was just like I finally knew how to do it. So I felt like I needed to, like I said, I'm one of those people, who was it we were talking to that likes to also dive into things like 110%? It was Brandon, right? He was like, you know, it's one of those things. Like I built one thing out of PVC pipe and now all of a sudden I'm like a plumber in the garage building like huge structures. It's crazy. It was crazy. But it's satisfying.

I'm gonna change your name to Mario in my phone. So while you're—

And I'll use the, I use the mustache from David Roma's episode.

Right.

And I'll just have that on all the time.

Or Brandon's beautiful fake mustache that he Photoshopped.

Yeah.

But that's, That's— you cannot believe it was Photoshopped.

It's absolutely—

that's still his, uh, headshot.

Oh yeah, and that one on the developers actually. Yeah, he's still on the developers YouTube though. That's still the classic.

Yeah, yeah, it was funny.

We had him on and I didn't know. I thought it was like— the whole time I was like teasing because I thought it was real. And I'm like, am I? Because I have goofy ones and they're not nearly as good as his. Like, this is a real— like, it's a solid one. And then finally at the end of the episode, he like totally blew my mind. He's like, yeah, I, I figure I should tell you because like you've been talking as if it was real the whole time and I thought it was. He's like, yeah, that was Photoshopped by somebody else here. And I'm like, what?

Yeah.

So he's such a character. One of my greatest like Slack moments was within his profile, there's a section that's like, what do you do? And he just said, I do my best.

Right.

Yes.

And that was a good thing.

I know we're at time, but do you, were you familiar with the Photoshop request channel in Slack at HubSpot?

We have one?

It did. I don't know if it exists anymore, but there's a guy who you could just put a request in and say, I want this done to my image, and he would do it.

Oh, wow.

I didn't know.

Wait, was that Colby? No, that would have been before your— I think it was. Yeah, there was—

I don't think the person's here anymore. I think—

Okay.

Which means—

all right. No, I don't know if I, I saw that one, but that's incredible.

That's—

Well, since we are running up a little bit out of time, there was one question I did really want to ask you, and that was like— and we ask everybody this because I love the answers because they vary, but Is there any piece of like advice that you've been given, like along the lines of mentorship where that's, whether it's like, doesn't matter which job or where, you know, but that's kind of stuck with you. That's really, because honestly, like everybody has something different. They're all really great. And I just, I feel like that's one of those things. 'Cause I mean, you already have that mentality, like we've mentioned, and I've already kind of, you know, kissed ass about, but it's true. Like it is absolutely true, just to be clear. Um, but is there anything that kind of sticks out for you that you've been given as a piece of advice?

You know, such a loaded question. But like, the first thing that comes to mind, and one of my biggest weaknesses, was that I would get excited about an idea that someone might mention. And in my brain, I'd start just, you know, thinking about it and evolving. And in doing so, I stopped listening.

Really?

I'd miss key pieces or I'd write my own narrative in my mind as to what that idea was. So I always just have like this little acronym next to me all the time that just says WAIT. This stands for why am I talking? And it's really to like tell myself, stop, take a beat and listen and think about what someone is saying and don't just try to like run with that idea. It's definitely a weakness of mine and something that I really am trying to do better at is really Listening more to, to the value they have in their ideas.

Wow.

That's cool.

That's nice. Now I sound smart suddenly.

That, that I need that literally. I, I will, I will talk and then I will continue to ramble and like go on. It's just, I know it's surprising, absolutely surprising, but, um, no, that's, that's an actual, that's, that's a really, really good one. Chris, I want to say thank you for coming on because this has been awesome. I know I got to see you very briefly, I think, at the last inbound, but that was like, it was only like 2 seconds because I was running around like an idiot. But, um, but no, thank you for coming on. This has been really great. And, uh, you know, the, the most important and very last question would be like, you know, who is the best HubSpotter that you've ever managed? I mean, no pressure. I mean, you know, that's not necessarily, you know, you know. Yeah, not that I want to put you on the spot, but I am. Don't answer that.

I'm just kidding.

Able to work with that, absolutely incredible. As far as the best person that I was able to manage specifically within the template marketplace was obviously you.

I had to scope that one down quite a bit to make sure.

Dennis, can you, can you clip the 1:05 mark, please?

No, but, but seriously, y'all, this was— I, I really, uh, can't, can't thank you enough for having me on. This was, this was great. It was, it was great to see all of you and, uh, and really catch up and, and, and chat.

Yeah, no, this is great. This is what, this is what these are all about. Like, I love every single episode. I've never been disappointed yet, which is— you, you would imagine you would have at least one episode where you're like, oh, okay, that was— that went all right. Every single one of them, I swear to God. And I'm not even like it It's, it's, it, it always ends and we're just like, man, that was great, that was great, I can't wait till the next one. So it's— this is no different. And, and obviously, like, being able to catch up with you and, you know, the history that we have is— it's fantastic. So I just want to thank you.

It's—

it is amazing.

So the feelings are mutual.

Absolutely awesome. Yeah, you guys have any other questions? AJ, Dennis?

Well, no, it's great seeing you again, Chris. Looks like such a long time, man.

It has been too long. Absolutely too long. I miss y'all and Glad we got to catch up, and you know, let's let's do it sooner again.

Yeah, for sure.

Sharpening those knives.

I'll try to find that video. I think you all have a better chance of finding it than I do.

Probably, yeah.

We'll get back on at the end of this.

Dennis can cut it in with a nice like kind of like intro to it.

Yeah. Me sharpening knives.

I love it.

All right.

Well, no, thank you again. And, uh, you know, I'll leave you with this, um, unattributed quote because I couldn't really find whoever mentioned it, but, uh, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Person who said that though obviously did not try to create the screenshots for these episodes in Midjourney because yeah, that's— I'm going to talk about wasted time. Uh, just, yeah, it doesn't work out very well. But you will notice, just a little shout out to myself, that every, uh, and Chris, you will be one of these people as well. That's why I'm mentioning this. Uh, we do make little like characters out of the guests and that's the, uh, that will be now the screenshot on YouTube. It's already on the website, but, uh, on YouTube as well. It's kind of like a, I, I, I, I don't want to say like, I don't know, but I would say like Pixar-esque because I don't want Pixar coming after me. So, um, but it's along those lines. So, but yeah, but that's the, uh, that's the show and thank everybody for watching and yeah, we can't do it without AJ and Dennis.

So boom.

Awesome. See you later. See ya.