Ep. 9 - CTRL+ALT+SUGAR with Jana Babouder Matta | Devs:After Dark

Have you— are you in the alt sugar world? Stevia?

Yes.

Erythritol?

The stevia stuff, yes. The problem is like, if you buy stevia, just you better be prepared to pay double what it would cost just to get Diet Coke. It's like, so at that point I'm like, I'll drink formaldehyde, sure, whatever. It's like Almost hitting double digits with the episode numbers here. This is how, this is how good it's coming along. Uh, I'm your host Nick, and with me as always is Dennis. AJ still is out. He should be back in a couple days.

Yes, sure, sure, sure. Well, there should be—

I know that's what everybody's waiting for. Everyone's tuning in to see, will he be here this week? Will he be here this week? But, uh, not this week. Um, But before we get started, we have a very special guest, someone who I work with on my team. So I'm really, really excited. Let's pay a couple of bills real quickly. If you haven't already signed up for the Dev changelog, you should definitely do that now. And you'll be able to do that just by going to developers.hubspot.com/changelog. And if you're a fan of the show and you're a fan of everything we do, the HubSpot Developers YouTube channel is going to be a place that you're gonna wanna go also. Dennis, do we have any dehugs coming up? Anytime soon?

We do. First of all, I just want to say that I'm so proud of you. You really have like grown. You're mature.

I practice in front of the mirror for like days just to— it's— It shows.

It really shows. Um, yes, we have, uh, several coming up. So we have on next week, the 30th, I think it is. Next Thursday is going to be on accessibility. The 13th, we're doing SEO and technical performance. And there's one more I'm planning. There's a couple more I'm planning. I'm planning one with, it's going to be on AI and being a developer. That's going to be in April. And there was another one. Oh my God. I'm forgetting what it was, but there's more. Now I feel like I am the unrehearsed, not ready to put my game face on.

Yeah. You know what we'll do? We'll put them, we can just list them on the homepage too of the The podcast site too. So if someone's watching the podcast, they can follow along with the the debugs too, or point them to the yeah. I mean, you have access to the site too. So don't don't act like you don't have power. You have you have all the power, Dennis. Dennis knows all the passwords. He does all the things. I just I look pretty and say dumb things. That's usually what my my role is here. But speaking of not being dumb, if you really want to upskill and uplevel, also recommend the HubSpot Academy as well. So if you go to academy.hubspot.com, that is where myself and a A lot of people try to uplevel and upskill. So if you are a noob, as my son likes to say, and you want to get better or get good, which he tells me all the time when we play games, the HubSpot Academy is the place you're going to want to go. And then also too, tickets are available for Inbound 2025.

It's—

I just, I just want to say—

Oh, really?

Sadly, I will not be attending this year's. I know everybody was really excited to see me and Dennis together. It's like, you know, when 2 superpowers collide, but It will be in San Francisco.

So if you get—

if you could just, uh, have your glucose monitor on stage with me, I think that'll be enough.

Okay, okay, that's fair, that's fair. I can have one sent to you and disconnect it so it gives you that nice little— it's that sound that makes you feel like you're at home. It's like that nice warm fuzzy feeling.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ah, Nick's here.

Um, one quick admonishment and apology I want to make, uh, publicly if Carter is watching. Uh, sorry about butchering your last name, uh, last episode. I had never said it out loud. I've only read it. Uh, so I did not— uh, yeah, I, I, as soon as I said that, there was— I got some messages. Uh, and AJ, AJ corrected me as well when he had watched it at like the day later. He's like, yeah, just so you know, you— that's really— and I was like, yes, I'm aware of that. I've never said his last name out loud. So just—

I, I genuinely don't think you should apologize. I think he should apologize to all of us.

Honestly, for having to spell it differently, Carter, this is your fault, not mine. Yeah. So, but without further ado, um, let our guest introduce. That's a good—

you can call my last name. See, that's the real test is fool me once, shame on you.

But no, I'm gonna let our guests introduce ourselves. Uh, she is on— I'm just gonna say she is on the ecosystem quality team with me, and it is awesome to have a teammate like this to work with. So, Jonna, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are and what you do. Yep.

I am Jonna. I live in Maine, fun fact. I am on the Ecosystem Quality team. I work with Nick, and I do our app quality reviews. So anyone that wants to get listed in the Marketplace kind of has to go through me and folks on the team, and we have programs in place to kind of determine app quality and improve the The listing process.

So, and you, you will put your Venmo QR code up later.

So people who want to bribe you to get it, I'll make sure to get that.

That's always— You gotta be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's always, yeah, that's always a fun thing. So why don't you start us off by telling us kind of how you got into the business, like how you got into the vertical? Because that for us, it's When we, when we try to tell a story for a developer or have a developer tell a story, um, we— it's always very interesting how everybody kind of— we all end up like, for example, here in DevRel, we've all— you, me, Dennis, AJ, and others, we've all ended up in the same place, but the journey in getting there, like anybody knows, is very, very different. And it's— those are the type of stories that we're always interested in telling. So how did you first get into Okay.

Yeah. So my journey is definitely really scattered. Um, I think I remember Hannah talking about how you go to college, you get a degree, and you just don't use it altogether. That's definitely my, my situation as well. Uh, I went to school for business management, and then I somehow got a job working on a cruise ship right after college, uh, in sales. They just had a booth at the college fair and I was like, oh, job, perfect. And they did that for a little bit and it had some ups and downs. It was kind of a bit challenging.

Like the waves, ups and downs.

Literal waves, actual waves, some big storms, a couple of cases of norovirus that put us in red level. So, a lot of crazy times, but needless to say, it wasn't a good long-term fit. So, from there, I Thought, oh, I'll go do something meaningful and work for a nonprofit. And turns out working for nonprofits is not much different from working for corporate. And it wasn't as meaningful and I was getting paid nothing. And I was like, all right, I guess I'm just going to try my hand at something else. And I got a job as an admin assistant at a startup that ran a top-level domain registry. So the .xyz TLD, as well as some other ones. And from there, because it was a startup vibe and it was very cutthroat, lots of turnover, I just kind of—

Yeah.

moved up pretty quickly and wore a bunch of different hats. And I started doing our domain registrar support, helped write blog posts. At some point, I ended up being the head of the anti-abuse operations that we had.

Huh.

So, all of the, like, people spamming, people doing nefarious things on .xyz domains, we would take down. And through all that, I started learning about DNS and tech, and I was like, ah, this is really interesting. And I wanted to actually go into security, but I was like, you know what, I'm a little too novice. I want more tech experience. And I'd reached a plateau with the registry. So, I started looking for other opportunities and moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And I came across HubSpot that had an office in Portsmouth randomly. And I was like, what? Who's here? This is such a sleepy little New England town. And I started seeing that A lot of people stay at HubSpot. It's really cool tech. And so I was like, let me try it out. And so I joined in support, and the learning opportunity was amazing. And it kind of really like scratched the itch of learning about new technology, learning about the different ways that people use it, getting into our CMS a little bit, and getting into troubleshooting and APIs. And from there, I was like, unlocked a whole new world for me. And that brought me to The ecosystem side of things where the opportunity opened up and I was like, this is now where I get to really flex out into like integrations and how people use them and what they build and what they can do on top of the tech that I've kind of grown to love. So that's kind of that in a nutshell.

Now, uh, going, rewinding a little bit, I imagine there was a lot of travel with the cruise ship industry. What, what was one of the favorite places that you were able to visit? Oh gosh.

So I was— that was probably the coolest thing about the job is you get paid to travel. The coolest place I think I went to would be Moorea in French Polynesia. Got to swim with sharks. It was just so— I was like, I'm getting paid to go to places that people pay thousands and thousands of dollars to vacation. That's pretty cool. It was wild. And unlike a lot of the other crew staff, the department that I was in did get to go off and enjoy on port days. And so I really got to take advantage of the lovely places. But yeah, it was, you got a lot of perks and then you had a lot of like not so, not so perky elements to it where, you know, you kind of sign off your rights as a human and accept the rights of the cruise ship. So it's, it's an interesting, very interesting industry.

2 questions. I have 2 questions. One, pirates, any pirate sightings?

No pirates. No, unfortunately. That would've been really cool. We did, ah, there was a one kind of crazy situation where we had to do an extra day at port because of a medevac situation and then a crazy food situation. And it was the only overnight I'd ever had. And that was kind of the only big surprise. Otherwise, no pirates. Just, uh, a lot of, a lot of South African officers and—

Dennis is dreaming of like Pirates of the Caribbean and has had the ride in Disney. That's it.

I really am.

I really am.

Yes, exactly.

Was there a dog with keys in his mouth that kind of ran around the ship? And, but yeah, that was, uh, shuffleboard.

Shuffleboard. That's the other question I had. Do you play? I imagine you're probably really good at that at this point.

Really good at shuffleboard. Yeah, that was a big thing. A big thing. But you know what too, it's tough because I enjoy it so much, but as a crew member, we weren't really allowed to enjoy passenger areas. To the fullest, especially while passengers were on board. So you had to be very like formal with your uniform and your name tag. If I was walking in a passenger area and I had coffee, I couldn't drink the coffee. I'd have to carry the coffee next to me and wait till I got to a crew area to drink it. So like little things like that where you're like, oh, it's so cool to be on this ship. And like, I can't use the gym at peak, uh, peak, uh, kind of customer times.

You'd be out there at what, like 4 AM doing shuffleboard when no one's out there? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. You gotta just like, and if you get caught, you know, oh my gosh, they can, they can essentially just take away your freedom on the boat. So if you, if an officer catches you, if you get on their bad side, they're like, I can just tell you don't get off at this port, this next port. So they make the rules. So it's a little bit like you gotta be, wow. Be, you know, get on people's good sides as much as you can.

Now you, it was, was it fine? You said it was fine art sales for, so did you get to like see some pretty interesting paintings and artwork and things like that? Or?

So, okay, it's really funny because it is— I call it fine art sales, and there was fine art. We did have some really interesting artworks. Like, there were some Rembrandts, there were some Picassos. I got to see really cool stuff. But this company was so interesting because we had some fine art, we had really interesting sculptures, but where they really made their money or where most of the art that we sold was what people refer to as prints. We even had a fancy term for it where it's— we called it a giclee, which is a digitally printed artwork, masterfully. It was so funny towards the end of my contract, you would see these artworks that— it was like the art— it was an artwork, it was lovely, but then they put these almost clear acrylic strokes over the colors to make it look as though it was textured like a painting, which is sort of a low-cost way of— Oh, my God. Like making a print look. But every, all the passengers knew as well. Like we had a real reputation, especially on the, the boats that are kind of more established or have older clientele. And they would just, you know, like, not original. That's a print. It's not an original. And we had all the terminology. And so we had to really combat that attitude from, from the passengers. But it was, I mean, it was wild. And sales was actually—

You have people arguing with you. That's not the Mona Lisa. I've seen it before.

Yeah. Oh my God. Oh, you would think we were like menaces the way that they approached us initially, but they—

So when you started to jump into tech with the startup, I just have to bring this up because Dennis absolutely loves real estate. And I know one of the things with the startup is real estate, right? That was involved in it. Cause just, okay. I just want to point that out cause Dennis loves real estate. And every time we have a guest, every time we have a guest, there's been a streak, I think, except for maybe one or two guests where real estate has been involved in it. And it's just, it's mind-blowing to Dennis how it He hates it. It's like his kryptonite when it comes to this thing. It's like everybody bringing up real estate. But no, that's kind of was like the first kind of like jump into the tech world. I was going to ask you with the top-level domain stuff, was there a lot of not spam fighting, but like, you know, fighting nefarious uses for like that top-level domain or?

Yeah. When they launched the top-level domain, it was— we had reputation problems because usually when you launch a new TLD, the best way to get into the market is to start at a low cost. But obviously, if you have a low-cost domain, that's like mad grab for anyone to just buy as much as they can. And then it's a volume game with a lot of bad actors where you're just sending out as much as you can and hoping you don't get blocked. And so we had a wide variety of nefarious types of activity. And we actually— it was a cool thing with partnerships, kind of the overlap with partnerships, where we would set up partnerships with other blocklist providers and anti-abuse providers or people monitoring the internet so that we could integrate with them and have them give us their data so we could be a little bit more proactive about takedowns as opposed to reactively waiting for, you know, spam to go out and then the reputation to drop. So we want to try and keep the nTLD reputation high because once you lose the reputation, it's hard for anyone legitimate to use a .xyz or use a new TLD because it just gets automatically blocked by most inbox providers. And we did even have, we had a couple coordinated takedowns with the FBI for big botnets and it was very cool. I mean, at the time I was like, oh my God, I got to wake up at midnight and do this thing and like get on and I have to wait for like, The go. So, but looking back, I was like, oh, that's kind of crazy. So it was a fun, fun and like really cool learning experience because by default you have to kind of understand what are the different types of, you know, malicious intent actions that people can take and what to look for and what we need to, what we need to uncover in the network. But I mean, we were monitoring millions and millions of domains, so we had to get a kind of a system for ranking and scoring and what was most top priority.

So Jonna gets to work with the FBI and kick down doors. She's in there and she's, oh, she's No, no, they don't.

I don't, I don't think they trust me too much anymore just to action some takedowns years ago. But I don't get through airports easy, so it didn't help me that much.

Go ahead, Dennis. I cut you off. I thought you were gonna ask him. That's okay.

No, no, you might have said this in your intro. How did you make— what was that transition like? What— how did you find this job and what stuck out to you?

Yeah. So, it was funny actually. I had no idea. I literally knew nothing about domains, about tech really going into it. I was just kind of in Los Angeles looking for jobs and this opening came up for, it was jan.xyz admin assistant. I figured I'd go in and interview and I met the woman who I would be admin assisting for. And she just seemed really cool, down to earth. I was like, oh, she knows so much. And they had me do a typing test and they were like, oh, you seem like a good fit. And so I just, I started. Nothing in particular really drew me to it other than the fact that I was like, they seem like good people and this seems kind of cool and I think I can help her out. And then as I kind of gained knowledge and purely by tenure, I think just But because everyone's like, ugh, startups are really tough, right? The environments can be really hostile. It's kind of weird. We had that weird setup, right, with the real estate on one side. So, we had 3 different businesses in a single office that, and each of them are kind of funding each other in a way. So, if the rental business was not doing so well, then the payday loan business would sort of boost it. And so, it was just like— kind of crazy world that I could see why not a lot of people wanted to hang out there. But yeah, I just was, like, learning so much. I mean, training people. The fact that I went into it with no tech experience, and then, you know, a couple of years later, was onboarding fresh out of college kids on, like, what's DNS, and how does the internet work? And I was like, whoa, this is crazy. Like, so unexpected. But it was pretty much happenstance. And I'm glad because— If you'd asked me when I graduated school, like, oh, you're going to do tech? I'd be like, no, absolutely not. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to make business deals. And, you know, but I love it. I think it's like, there's so much to learn. It's so interesting. And like, any specific thing you hone in on, you just have like a whole wealth of things to gain expertise on or to learn about. And so, like, I love just like finding little tidbits. And gosh, I was reading like RFC. You know, DNS, be like, this is wild, these CNAME, you know, just the stuff that you think is so boring. Uh, and I love it. Yeah. So to answer your question, how it was random luck that just got me into it.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you got to drink from the fire hose at the very beginning. So like coming to HubSpot, you were, you were, you were already set. You already had the groundwork, you know, laid out, you know, for tech, at least for big tech and everything like that. So no, that's fantastic. That is. And that's, I, I think too, like, I think that's probably one of, for me, like one of the not easiest ways, but personally, like the most efficient way to learn is just to kind of get thrown into it and like break stuff. Yeah. Isn't that, I think as we talked with David, was it Dave? Was it Roma? Where we talked about that, where it was like the learning is just get in there and break stuff and then you'll, you'll, you'll understand more than you will reading scenarios and get like, watch a real world thing break or try to, you know, fight a, you know, a top level domain that's, or somebody trying to use a top level domain, like. inappropriately or whatever the case may be in real life, in real time, easier than reading any case study and theoreticals, you know? So I think that's fantastic. That's really cool. Honestly. Yeah.

That's, that's the cool thing about HubSpot too, cuz I feel like when I came to HubSpot and I, when I started the startup, they really big on oversight. So I was answering tickets, you know, helping customers and my manager, she would be like, I have to read every single response, at least for a bit until I can trust you. And then I came to HubSpot and in support, and I remember I had Isaac, I had Matt Gaw, I had these great people, and I'd be like, okay, I'm ready to send my response. Can you read? Like, you have to read it first, right? And they're like, no, no, no, just send it. I trust you. And I was like, what? And it's amazing. They're just like, they throw you into it and they're like, ask the right questions, you know, learn, but we trust you. And it's like very cool that they, the approach that they take, like really lets people just drink from the fire hose and learn. So it's a—

How long did it take you to be comfortable with that? Because for me, for example, when this whole idea of trust, I'm still not sure, like waiting for like the other foot to drop at some point in time, you know?

Yeah, I think I'd agree with you that I'm not sure I'm still fully comfortable. I think when I realized, oh, this is the, you know, I, I've moved on to the— I've moved over to the other side is when I started onboarding folks on our team and being like, you know, if someone asks me the question, I'm like, I trust you. Like, you don't— I don't need to look this over. You just go for it. And I was like, oh yeah, like, this is just a better way. And like, I do trust them so I can trust myself, right? But it, you know, I second-guess myself all the time.

If it makes you feel any better, if they let me and Dennis do something like this, don't worry. You're good. You're good. I mean, they trust us so far. I mean, you know, I mean, AJ may have bailed, but I mean, yeah, he's probably watching like, son of a— yeah, but, uh, but no, that's, uh, yeah, I think like that happens through— I don't think I, you know, I, I would really love to meet the person that is completely over that and never worries about that and find out how they do that because I really don't think from a percentage-wise, there is many people that actually don't feel that, you know, even to some extent, even though whatever persona they put on or how, you know, like confident they seem. I, yeah, to me it's something that I don't personally think I'll ever get over. I'll still feel that to some extent no matter what I do.

So. For sure.

I would have to say like, if you do find that person, I don't trust that person.

That's a person.

No, seriously, I think that's probably a bad employee because I mean, like having that kind of, uh, That weight there, I think it kind of keeps everything in check, you know, that makes you a good employee, that makes sure you're actually responsible and doing your things, you know.

That's, yeah, as opposed to somebody who just says things and thinks they're right all the time. Um, but no, I just hope Isaac isn't watching. No, I know, uh, but no, uh, so yeah, that, that kind of stuff does take its toll and it's Very stressful. So the question I pose to you, Jonna, is then what do you do then on the flip side of that to try to kind of unwind from that or to try to like, you know, not get too overworked with just kind of how everything could pile up pretty quickly, right? You know, even if it's HubSpot, if it's, you know, working at the startup, you know, and being exposed to things that maybe you've never even done before, like what are the type of things that you do to try to like kind of ease that stress?

Yeah, I— there's a few things I can think of. I love— well, I love walking. If I'm ever in a— it's like immediate, immediate go-to is like I'm in a stressful situation, I'm just put my computer down, get the harness on, Tuko, go out for a walk, and I just feel better. So much better. Um, walking, hikes, exercise. I feel like I have this thing where For the longest time, I've tried to force myself to work out in the morning because it's so much easier. You start your day, it's out of the way. Whatever comes up, it doesn't throw off anything because, all right, this thing is done. And I can't do it. And I figured out the reason I couldn't do workouts in the morning was because workout is my— it's like my therapy. So it feels so much better, it feels so much more invigorating if I do it at the end of the day. And that's where I really pour in—

Yeah.

Just today, man, this sucked. And you just get it all out in the workout. So that's another thing I think I do— I love using to unwind and to shed any stress. And probably the third biggest thing is I love baking. I am not a professional baker. I love trying things out with baking. I love cake decorating. I think it's just— oh, it's so much fun. I love making pastry.

Oh, man.

It's so fun. Pastry and seeing it fluff. I don't even— I don't have a sweet tooth, but I just love the art of baking and the science. I'm gonna have to mail you stuff because—

Please do.

I end up throwing away things. It's like kind of a shame. Or I go to bring them to my family's house and they're not as good.

Just be at the door eating out of the package right in front of it, you know, like looking at them. Exactly.

Yeah, you just see me, my weight just expanding.

What? The one—

Oh, nice.

Okay, now I might— you can't see my ears, but they perked up. That's For sure. Uh, the one advice Bree gives is just don't try to attempt like doing things differently when it's for like a family. Remember she said when she was cooking for the family, I think it was Thanksgiving, it might've been, but like she tried to attempt something different and it was just like, always, always, always experiment on your own time. Don't do it for a family event. So that's always good advice. So we thank Bree for that for sure. Um, but you also though, uh, I know you said that you had a, uh, you wanted to weigh in on a particular controversial debate, uh, when it's Audible books versus actually reading books, because I know we talked about that.

Okay. It's almost less so that I want to weigh in, but I need to be convinced one way or another because I'm— first of all, I know it came up about driving, and I find I'm like, for some reason— and I thought about this in advance— I was like, wait a minute, driving doesn't count as working, or it's not in the same category as working for, for the amount of attention you can pay. to the audiobook as opposed to driving. And my argument is you can listen to the news and retain it while you're driving. Like, that's— radio is a thing. You can— I feel like there's less, like, brain capacity needed. I— granted, this doesn't— shouldn't say anything about how I drive.

Can you let us know what hours you're on the roads?

We can let— There's less concentration needed for driving. So I think driving— and but I will agree that if I'm working, I'm not paying attention to an audiobook, 100%. It's— I've tried, it doesn't work. Uh, I'm not retaining enough of the book, I'm missing critical stuff. So definitely can't work. My big question for you is, does it count? Is it the same? Is one better than the other, like reading versus listening to the audiobook? What do you— do you guys think?

I have opinions.

I, I have—

okay, first of all, uh, It depends on who's reading the audiobook. I mean, if you have someone who's really, like, really good at it, huge difference and can be better than reading the book. I will say, like, you hear a totally different perspective, right? It's like, oh my God, I didn't think of it that way. Like that mood, that emotion. Your thought about being able to retain while driving is just wrong.

I'm sorry. I'm gonna step away.

You guys handle this. Yeah, I'm like, all right, let's go, let's go.

I mean, if it's like light fluffy, yeah, sure, you can, you can retain some like news, but like you're not going to have a really like, uh, deep understanding of the highlighted parts of your book, you know, like where you go back and reread it. You're— that's not, it's not gonna happen. Sorry.

Well, okay, when you're driving, are you actively thinking through something? Or are you, you know, are you—

when I'm— wait, wait, wait, when I'm driving, I'm actively thinking about dying.

Like, staying on the whole time, the whole time you're driving, you're sitting there saying that?

Most men think about the Holy Roman Empire. I'm sure that's like, that's another thing that they constantly think about. But no, I mean, I, I just to kind of, uh, fuel, uh, the argument a little bit, I think, I think you can listen to audiobooks. I just think about it, it depends on how much Create— like, like, for example, like, if it's a, um, like, if it's a fantasy, uh, one that, like, that's more of, like, less realistic, right? Then the imag— like, the imagination that you can take on. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Like, if I'm listening to an audiobook, like, I get— you know, I tried Game of Thrones, like, when it first came out on audiobook. Yeah, no, it's just not gonna work. Like, it's way too in-depth, it's way too detailed. I have to, like, remember 50 characters that all die 5 seconds later. It was just like, that was just unobtainable, uh, from that perspective. But like certain ones I've tried and it's been successful. I guess it just matters the subject matter. And on top of that, if I could pay personally Morgan Freeman to read them all, then yes, I think I'd be able to just listen to it nonstop 24/7. But, um, but yeah, I really do think it depends on how much creativity the person themselves has to help fuel and create to like Underst— you know, to try to make the story more theirs. So, um, but yeah, fight more about it. Let's do it.

Yeah. Well, so the reason I can fight more about— because I'm thinking of all these metaphors, but I do— or other situations that I'd ask, like for example podcasts. A lot of people listen to podcasts on—

that's true—

in the car while they're driving. They retain them. And that's— but I think the argument of the complexity Can make sense. But the reason I ask about audiobook versus reading is I, maybe in the last couple of years, have gotten very into audiobooks. And at first it was for— I started because I was reading Dune, the book, and I was like, I'm having such a hard time keeping track of everything. And a friend suggested, oh, for any books I'm struggling with really staying in it and not getting distracted, try the audiobook and see if that helps you get through it. Because there's something about— And then I got into the question of Is audiobooks cheating, or am I cheating? Is reading the better training for your mind? Do you know what I mean? Is that—

I, I would— I wouldn't drop reading, but like, I, I don't think like you're cheating necessarily. Like, you're not getting demerits for it.

We're all gonna look down on you because of it.

I don't know. Am I getting—

why is she—

why are you on this podcast? No, sorry.

Why are you even talking to me? Oh my God, you don't read books, right? No, I, I prefer it. I, I know my wife and I think, uh, I think it was Justin Givens as well, uh, mentioned that as well, that they just don't believe that, um, it's— it doesn't count, it's not actually reading. And I'm like, ah, okay, I guess. But I, I kind of prefer it in certain circumstances. So, um, but yeah, it's one of those.

100%. Yeah, I, I, I wanted to be— I want someone to tell me definitively no, it's not, because I love it. There's just not enough time in the day because it's You can have an audiobook while you chore, while I walk, or, you know, I can't, I can't walk with a book in front of me. You can't. So I'm like, I'm gonna try, but I'm prone to injury.

Augmented reality, it's coming. It's coming. Maybe you shouldn't have any. Just have a book on one side and you're walking on it. Yep. That's, let's do it, Dennis. We'll make it. We'll be rich. We'll be rich. Okay.

Okay.

Get a lot of people hurt. That'll be fine. So now that you're in the tech world, are there any type of events or conferences that you've either gone to or have just seen recently that have really kind of fueled that passion and that fire? Or workshops too?

Yeah, this is funny because it's been so long since I've done Tech events. I have in the past. I went to RSA, the security conference in San Francisco. I don't. I don't remember what it stands for.

RSA.

Something security awareness. But it was. I mean, it must have been like ages ago, and and I really did enjoy them because I think they're really great networking. I've made so. Oh gosh! There was one year. You know, you set up these meetings. You meet these really intelligent people, and it's so much easier to. connect with folks at the events and at conferences, as opposed to just cold emailing or working over a different channel. But it's been so many years.

Is it one of those conferences where you have to bring a separate cell phone in case, like, do you know the Black Hat conferences where it's like, yeah, don't bring your real cell phone if you're really going to go there because it's going to get—

I didn't have the awareness to do that in the past, but I do remember there were some really interesting demos where someone would, you know, the demo was someone being like, oh, this person opened their bank, the person in the audience, like, I see that you opened your banking app on, you know, on this public network.

Right.

So I'm about to go in and get, you know, and they wouldn't actually showcase anything. It was very cool. But yeah, so a lot, and like, it was huge. That's the other thing I remember, just massive. Like, you could, you couldn't spend enough time there either. There's so many people to meet, so many, so many booths, so many cool, Cool demos, cool displays, but it's I should probably get back. I can't you know I haven't even gone to an inbound yet. It just hasn't worked out with timing that I've yet to go to an inbound in five years at HubSpot.

So just so you know, my my partner pulled out.

No, there's an opening.

Here we go. Here we go. All right, Dennis. All right, we have it.

Here we go. Lot filled. Put me in code.

Yeah. Shame me. Go ahead. I'm here.

Yeah.

I will.

I told you you could promote me in and I could— I'll have a green screen. I'll— it's— I can, you know, it's, it's not as good as the real thing, but you'll get, you know, maybe half as good, maybe. But just as long as there's a global monitor.

Have you guys gone to any good events? What's your favorite event recently been since I'm, uh—

Well, I mean, actually, I mean, not counting Inbound. I mean, Inbound obviously was was great. I mean, just because, you know, AJ wasn't there, but just kidding. While he's not here, I'm gonna get all of those in as much as humanly possible. But no, we actually, it was a local thing actually that we went to was last year, which I'm hoping we do more of them this year as well. But we did, I think it was Time Out Chicago, 'cause there's one in, when I went to Boston for Peer Week, I think we went there as well, but there's one in Chicago. But everybody, all the HubSpotters in the area, like the Chicagoland area all got together and got to meet each other. And it was nice because it was, um, you got to meet different departments because like, you know, like, like, you know, John, most people like in ecosystem quality, we did— there is nobody in the Midwest, like aside from like there's John, who's in Wisconsin. And then there's us in Illinois. And then that's about it. That's all we know, like as far as that, but we got to meet like a bunch of other people from a bunch of different departments, whether it be from like accounting to just all sorts of stuff where you really wouldn't have— I don't think I ever would have talked to them on Slack even. You know, there would never have been a time where those teams crossed.

Yeah.

So that was something really, really cool that I know we're gonna— we want to do more of in the future, which I hope we do. I think me and AJ might try to do something either here or Nashville, maybe. I was gonna float that idea, but that's an expensive idea to float. But yeah, that for me, that was, That was really, really fantastic. How about you, Dennis?

I mean, recently we went to San Francisco. Actually, Isaac, who has been commenting, he's there as well, to the Replit AI coding thing that happened. I thought it was fine. It was good. It was small. It was the first time I've ever been to San Francisco, Which was fun. I got to walk with Isaac quite a bit. The in-person stuff is always huge for me, just seeing people and you just interact much better than you do via the Slacks and all that good stuff, the Zoom meetings. The event itself was fine. Fine. It was good. It's fun watching people learn a new technology and watching AI move at the speed of light. So yeah, that was fun. And then You know, of course inbound, all that good stuff. I don't go to a lot of events, to be quite honest. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I not even like music events anymore, honestly. I think that's probably mostly because of this darn kid that I acquired. Picked up 10 years ago.

I was at Target and just, you know, it happened to be on sale.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it's I find like as more time goes on, yeah, I've been doing less. I want to do more, but, but yeah, no, Dennis, thanks for not picking me up anything in San Francisco knowing that I'm a huge 49ers fan. Appreciate that.

Just throw that out there.

Yeah, you're welcome.

But you did though, you did sport some really awesome t-shirt attire as far as the Devs After Dark t-shirt. So I do appreciate that. I saw that picture. That was really nice. Uh, so thank you for that. Um, it's a good t-shirt. The font at the bottom needs to change, but I won't be too picky about myself. I picked a really bad font. It's just like a real weird cursive font and you can't read it. And it's—

stop obsessing over it. Oh my God. He's brought this up like 3 million times.

Well, design is like something I did before I was a developer. So I get like really hypercritical. Maybe.

Yeah.

Well, not with the examples I've been giving. Uh, but yeah, it's just one of those things. where it's like, I see something and I get like really hyper-focused on it where I'm like, that shouldn't be like that. That shouldn't be like that.

But nevertheless, the best thing to do is put it on a t-shirt so you see it.

Well, I didn't realize till after I put it on the t-shirt that it was a problem.

See, there's always, you know, well, you didn't even realize it.

Yeah. When I printed it up and I showed it to her, she's like, yeah, that's, that's kind of hard to read. And I was like, no, it's not hard to read. Then I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it some more. And I'm like, shit, that's hard to Yeah, I was like, all right. So just how many t-shirts did you put it on is the question.

Did you? Okay, there you go. You caught it before you did bulk order. And you know, that's, that's cool.

I just printed a whole bunch more. I'm gonna be shipping those out soon.

With like a little card on the inside. Yeah, you can thank so-and-so for the shitty design. Um, but yeah, no, I— it's, it's just one of those things. Um, but let me ask you this about like You had mentioned, uh, there was a, a quote that you had mentioned, uh, because like, as you're kind of going through, you know, you go from non— let's say non-tech, right, to a certain extent, and then you start to pick up these things like rapidly, like things are kind of flying at you, drink from the fire hose, right? We've all heard the analogies. Um, there was a piece of advice that you were kind of given like from like a mentor, you know, so to speak, that, uh, really when I, when I read it, it was, uh, It was really great. I, and like, could you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think those are the type of pieces of information that you get, like while everything's coming like a fire hose, there's these few things that kind of come through where you kind of like, you're like, I need to save that. That's, that's, that's, it's maybe, maybe not technical, but it's, it's such a thing where it's, this is going to help me in the future. Can you tell us about that?

Okay. Wait, you're gonna have to remind me. Here's it. I've got it up.

It's all right. I have 50 screens with like a million things all over it. So I'm like, I'm literally just picking stuff out like I know what I'm talking about too. No, no, no, no. I like this, but it was data is more compelling than passion, but a mix of both is the best way to move people.

Yeah.

Do we need background music for this?

Something that won't get us like original or copyright?

Be like super cathartic.

Do it. I'll read it. I'll read it slowly. And then you give me, you give me some music. You lead me in. All right.

Ready?

Go ahead.

Do it.

Data is more compelling than passion, but a mix of both is the best way to move people. That's, yeah. Just write, do me as a write-in for the Academy Awards or Grammys, please. Thank you. Thank you. That's all I ask. It's not much, but tell us about that. How did that— when you heard that and you were given that as a piece of advice, how did that impact you? Okay.

Yeah, I think before hearing that, I definitely— my approach to so many problems I faced in work was passion. Just, ah, if you really care about something and you bring that care to the table, everyone else will totally care about it with you, and you just have to make sure that that emotion comes through. And it didn't really get the results. And if anything, it led to probably me getting more frustrated than I needed to, that I wasn't able to convince people, you know, just with my emotions or with my passion, or, you know. And then, I had this mentor that was someone on the analyst team. And it was back when I was a product expert, which a lot of what I did as a product expert was, synthesizing customer data in a particular product area and presenting it to the product teams. And I wasn't in product. I didn't have any way to influence their roadmap other than trying to make a compelling story for them based off of the customer data that we were seeing. But instead of focusing on the data pieces, I would pick out the things that looked the most painful, in my opinion, and threw it at them with my passion. And it wasn't really working. And it hadn't, you know, I was like, ah, it hurt, right? And then I got this advice and I was like, okay, like, why don't I take a different approach and start actually looking at numbers? And like, if I'm so passionate about something, or if I think it's such a big pain point, you know, if I have all this emotion, I should back that with actual concrete data because I, you know, I can convince someone or they can be empathetic with my emotion, but it's, I'm not going to I can't force someone to feel as emboldened about an issue as I am. They don't have the same experiences as me. They're not as close to the issue as I am. They might have their own priorities going on. And the minute I started putting data into it as well, but also not letting go of finding ways to take the data, but then also do a demo or kind of walk through the pain or show it as a story, as opposed to just numbers, show it as a story, not even just the the pain itself, but like, oh, data can mean impact, right? So, like, in that role, as I started using numbers and using data and pairing it with my passion, as I call it, or, you know, like, the storytelling, it became so much easier to get buy-in from folks to solve customer pains, or to even, you know, in some cases, it's like, oh, they get— it's easier for them to buy into a recommendation or an action that I want them to take. Because then, once they've completed it, they can now put that on their resume and say, like, oh, because of the data that Jana pulled, I can say that I increased or I decreased customer support tickets by X amount, which costs the company $40 each ticket. So, by doing this thing, I can tell my manager I saved the business X amount of dollars. I love that. You know what I mean? So, like, It really changed the way I approach like any problem or any kind of thing that I'm going into where I'm trying to get someone else's buy-in. Because at the end of the day, a lot of what we do does involve other teams and other teams investing in a project that you want them to invest in or buying into an idea that you have. So, it really—

Nothing's more disheartening than when you're like trying to pitch something and you're giving it like your all, then that one person, right? And they're right, but that one person's like, Uh, and do you have any metrics to back that up? And then it's just like the air just like deflates and you're like, son of a bitch. No, I don't technically. I've got some strong opinions and I got some other people that agree with me, but not like, I mean, it, when I started getting into analytics, like I started doing SEO early on and, um, which really kind of, you know, you're, you're forced in like, not that you shouldn't be, but you're, you're kind of forced into that analytics mode. Yeah. And that was kind of one of those things where it was like you want to make an SEO decision and you want to change, you know, this, that, or the other. And you want to, and you know, it's like even in your, even if you know it's like 100% right when you don't have like the split testing or the multivariate A/B testing to kind of go along with it to show that like, yeah, this is what's happening and this needs to be the right way to do it. It's like it, it gets frustrating. It gets frustrating to like try to get over that hurdle of not getting not letting it show. Do you know what I mean? Because you're so passionate. Like, do you ever, do you ever like have to like stop yourself where you're getting so passionate about it where you're kind of like, I know I'm right, but I don't have the metrics to back it up yet. So I can't push the envelope even though I'm like, I, Isaac could even tell you, I'm sure that like the LaPortes are nothing short but like compassionate about like the things that they do from a career perspective. But yeah, it's, it's, it's hard sometimes because it's like you, Because then like they, like people don't realize too, like in the back of your mind, and I'm not speaking for you, but I'm just saying like metaphorically in the back of your mind, you're trying to do what's best for the customer. It's not like you're not doing that, but it's really hard sometimes if you don't have the actual metrics to back up that passion. And it just, yeah, it's a weird feeling, but I mean, once you have the metrics though, then it's like you're flying, you know? So, but it's, it's understandable.

Yeah.

It's definitely underrated. Yeah.

And you don't always have them too. I think it's funny because it never even occurred to me at the startup, but we had this one manager who was very senior as well, very senior manager, really close with the CEO. And he was a little bit of a tyrant and he would just make decisions and whatever he said went. And a lot of people would try and be like, this is wrong. Like, oh man, this is totally— we shouldn't be doing it this way. What I've written out is, it's going to be way better. And he would just, what he says goes. And because he had that tenure and he had that weight, you know, he could just say, he was the decider. And I remember back then thinking, you know what? At the time, I didn't even think, oh, if I want to push something forward, I bring data. At the time, I was like, whatever he says goes. And I just go with that. And now I'm like, oh, I probably could have been the one to get this person who was very rigid in what they believed. to say yes if I could have brought that. So, I wish I learned that lesson sooner because instead I was like, hey, just don't be passionate about stuff because this person's the decision maker. And now I'm like, oh no, you can be passionate and fight for stuff that you want if you've got the right weapons in your quiver.

Well, what do you do if that person doesn't change? Like, if you bring the metrics and they don't, like they're just ego trip. type people? What's the next step?

That's a great question because I think it probably depends. I'd say, it's funny, I think this ended up being an interview question for people that we brought on board on that startup because he was the type of person to be like, yep, I don't care about the data. I'm still doing it. I'm still doing it my way. I think you probably have to just find a balance where you care enough that you feel good about the work that you do, but you know that there's certain things that you let go, you just can let go of and put your efforts elsewhere in ways that they're not. Because you will always encounter someone that's just a tyrant and, you know, just doesn't want to listen to other people. And I think you, to preserve your mental health, you, you have to let go of some things that you might want to push forward, but then also think about, okay, why didn't what I presented to them work, right? Like, what didn't I do right? What didn't I understand about them or what they want for this initiative that I'm putting forth that ended up having my argument or my case not be successful? And then take that and think of other creative ways to do it differently next time.

Right.

See what you can do to push things through. But yeah, it's Sometimes it's just a no.

That's kind of why I love psychology at first. And there's a book too, and I can't remember— it's How to Influence People and Win Something. I can't remember what— Win Friends.

Yes, so it was like Influence People, one of those great books.

Great Audible read.

You honestly— Dennis, I have it on Audible. Yeah, that's why I was like— that's why I just thought about it. I was like, yeah, I got that audiobook. That's actually— but no, I, I, I think that's, uh, one of the— that's kind of why I've kind of got into it too, because like You may have all the right passion, you may have all the right metrics, but it may not get done. It just— I think it was, uh, what was it? Speaking of— what was it? Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna butcher the Picard, uh, quote, but it's, you can do everything right, you can make all the right moves, but you can still lose. It's not a weakness, it's life. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's just one of those things where that's, that's going to happen sometimes.

Mm-hmm.

But Nick, you are—

you impress me sometimes. Where do you— how do you gain—

Like, I don't know anything, to be honest.

I'm a fountain of useless knowledge sometimes. Like, I really am. Like, if it's like some— for some reason, like '90s movies, military history, and like there's just certain things that like my— there's no room to get rid— I can't get rid of it. So there's like limited room for everything else. It's weird. It makes for good talking when you're rambling. But yeah, it's You sound— That's— see, that's the ploy, is you just— you have to sound— it's the confidence, right? You got to come in with the passion and the confidence. So I may not know what I'm talking about sometimes, but if you got passion and you got confidence, right? And charts and graphs. That was always my big thing, was like, if you don't know shit, just have some charts and graphs. It'll help. It'll definitely help you in the long run. So, so the next time we're in a meeting and I bring up a chart and a graph, just be like, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He has no clue. Ah, I'm just kidding. Sometimes. But, but no, yeah. And with that, with that, you may have answered the question slightly already, but let's, let's flip, let's flip the roles a little bit. Let's say you were giving advice as a mentor to someone. What would that like that? Let's say they were first starting out and it can be any, it can be any vertical, right? Even then they're starting out in the sales, if they're just getting started in a startup or maybe they're going to get bombarded with tech or Even if it is like somebody at HubSpot where they're, you know, maybe they do have experience, but they're coming into, like, like you said, you went from customer service into the developer relations role. Like what kind of mentorship advice would you give to somebody in that end? Like pick one of those instances. I know I just gave you 3 and I'm just like generalized, but—

No, no, I'm, I feel like I have, there's like a few like bullets that stand out across the board. Like the, the first thing I think generally the advice I'd give anyone, even if you have experience, even The one thing I think has been best for like me starting any job or jumping into anything is like, it's okay to not know stuff. It's totally fine. Like, don't just, don't feel worried or freak yourself out or blurt out an answer that you don't actually know. Like, it's totally fine to not know stuff. If anything, it's better to be comfortable being totally—

Another t-shirt, another t-shirt thing. Anton was talking about designers and turning into developers. That's another one for a t-shirt is it's okay not to know everything. I'd wear it every day.

It's okay.

It's okay. Yep. Yep. And I, you know, I think it's like one thing, speaking of Isaac, like the best, you know, when I started at HubSpot in support, I, I was like, I'm, I'm uncomfortable. The first time I think I troubleshooted, troubleshoot. I, you know what, guys? I'm, for my whole life, I'm like, what is the past tense?

Troubleshooted. I'd say it. It's okay. Yeah. You're, you're among friends. It's fine. Yeah. I've heard it both ways.

Troubleshoot.

Troubleshoot.

Okay, I troubleshoot. I was hoping maybe to catch one of you in an oopsie of a—

You're talking to a guy that makes constant mistakes, like, all the time talking. So it's— yeah, ask Carter McKay.

But yeah, but Isaac, you know, I would— he just kind of steered me so well to, instead of answering my questions, like pushing me to ask more questions. Like, you know, pushing me to be like— I, I'd say, I don't know. And then he's like, okay, well, what if that— you know? And it was— it just really helps if you go into things being like, I'm okay with not knowing, and I can, you know, ask the right questions and find, find information, be resourceful. Like, you'll learn so much faster.

This—

I was like, what was the second piece of advice? Oh, yeah. Across the board. This kind of has to do with asking questions, but also just advice I'd give to anyone is, like, be a really good listener. And, you know, I think there's so much value in listening well and even just in, like, working— like, understanding the people that you work with. Not from, like, I want to gain advantage. I want to get to know you so I can know what, you know, moves your wheels or spins your wheels and, you know, know how to manipulate you. No, it's like, oh, I—

Yeah.

I want to understand the people around me so that I can work better with them and understand what drives them so I know like, oh, this might excite them. There's this mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between the people around you in a working context, if you're presenting to them or if you want to move a project forward. And in that situation with a tyrant, that wants to make all the decisions, and you're like, oh, maybe if I understood a little bit why they, they think they know best about this, then I can gain an understanding of, of that position. And then maybe that'll change why I think I should push for something different. You know, maybe I'll have my opinion changed. So I think, like, listen and understand the people around you is a really big way to be successful no matter what. Did you, like—

I'll be honest, like, me personally, that I needed to like learn that. Dennis, I know you're shocked, is to speak less, listen more. Um, did you, did you, if you don't mind— Needed past tense? Okay, okay, we could say it's an ongoing project. That's fine, we'll call it that.

All right.

Every time I talk about it in my head, I'm like, are you talking too much? Are you talking too much? Um, but did you, did you Did you kind of come from that sort of, because that's such an important thing that you would pass down to somebody, did you find that hard yourself? Because I did, like where you were saying like, I need to talk a little bit less and listen a little bit more. Like, did you, because I mean, I would imagine, and I'm prefacing this with, I would imagine everybody earlier in their career, probably, you know, because you want to like, you want to turn the company on its ear, right? You want to change everything. You're going to come in, you're going to show everybody the right way to do everything.

Yeah.

The indiscretion of youth, right? It's kind of what you do. Like, have you ever— did you find yourself kind of like having to learn that going forward?

I think so. This is why I think I was very fortunate in my career starting in sales, albeit however legitimate or illegitimate some of the artworks I was selling were. It was the fact that I was forced to go through sales training, and that's the first lesson that they give you in sales is It gets such a bad rap, but it's actually really just the art of being a good human and learning about the people around you and understanding what their needs are, what excites them, what they don't like is the key lesson to sales. And I was like, oh, this is applicable. This is just being a good person and being nice to folks. And I was like, and obviously, it's not like I don't want to say it's, oh, this is just being a good person, as in by not doing that, people aren't good people. But it's just such a thing that you get slapped in the face with almost like, this is how you do good sales. And you don't think about it. But yeah, when I was younger, definitely, especially in college, if you think about just in general people, it's really hard to check that instinct in yourself. And I think I did struggle with it before I even knew to look for it. And luckily, coming into career in sales, now I try to be so conscious of it, especially— I was thinking about this too, coming on the podcast. I was like, oh man, I'm so not used to talking about myself and me talking so much. I hope I get a chance to ask them a bunch of questions. But I want to respect all speakers and panelists.

Ask away. I mean, ask away.

Yeah.

But yeah. Yeah. I'll pass responsibility off to Dennis and Dennis will deflect. That's how— that's kind of how we run the whole thing. And then AJ usually picks up the hard work, but you know, when he comes back, it'll be there for him later. But no, yeah, I mean, feel free. Like, yeah, if you have questions for us, sure. I just— I want to make sure that you're able to kind of tell your story because we— I mean, just so you know, we appreciate you coming on here. No, I mean— So much so that I told Dennis before we started, I appreciate you so much that because of my technical difficulties, I had to wear a headset today. So I have a— I have a mohawk that's flat. It had a yeah, had a flat in it.

It's different.

I'm gonna walk around looking silly all day, but we I did that for you, Johnna. I did that for you.

Thank you. No, and I was like, do you know? I was surprising myself because I'm I swear I have such a fear of public speaking and of any kind of audience. I just clam up immediately, and my heart just starts going, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do this. You're just talking to friends. You're relaxing, and so I'm really glad. I really I feel honored to be, to be on here.

No, the honor's with us. You should have watched our first episode if you really want to make yourself— anybody can make themselves feel better if they watch the 3 of us the first time we talk. Me, AJ, and Dennis.

Oh, you guys were great. Well, my question too is like, where do you see— what's, what's the— what's your dream for the podcast? Like, what's your north? What's like, if you had, if you had magic, what's your magic wand podcast?

Like, we're doing it right now.

Like, after you, I think we're shutting down the doors.

Oh, come on. Yeah, I'm episode 9, not 10.

That's true too. Yeah, you go first because I, I kind of have some ideas, but you know, it's—

yeah, no, I mean, my general goal for this is to, uh, bring community. Like, make sure— like, the things you're saying right now are very important for people to hear. Like, just listening is A skill that people need to be reminded of all the time and be, you know, yeah, I know, right? That guy there. But yeah, like just letting everyone have their voice, right? I want to have tons of people on here who are afraid of public speaking have the opportunity to come on and, you know, kill it. Like really do a good job and feel proud for that.

Yeah, I echo that 110%. Like at the end of the day, Even when we first started talking about doing this, it was telling stories, right? It was conversations that were not too technical, that were not— that were lighthearted, right? Not controversial, but just telling a story, right? And to have people be able to kind of like feel like no matter who they were, uh, and no matter what they did, even if they listen to this episode and they don't work for HubSpot, or let's say that they don't work— they don't do something tech-related.

Yeah.

They could still listen to the conversation and feel like they were a part of it, or they could jump in if they were here, like in the, you know, in the studio without, without us, without skipping a beat. So that, that to me is like— and we've been— and the weird thing is we've been able to accomplish that in, you know, a very short amount of time where it takes most people to get into their groove or their niche, right? Like takes them some time.

Sure.

We've had to cut out like my corny jokes and things like that that I think like narrow the focus down, which is, you know, never a bad thing. But yeah, I want to be able to take this, like Dennis said, and just continue to build on it and talk to more people, bring people in that might not necessarily— this might not be their thing, or they would never think to do something like this. Because quite frankly, before I worked here at HubSpot, doing anything like this was way outside of anything I would have ever considered. Right? Go like speaking at inbound. Like, no, I would have never. There's that. Even going to inbound is probably something where I never would have even considered doing it because it was just like not the norm, right? So I want people to be able to be comfortable, kind of come outside of their shell a little bit, you know, and just be able to have a conversation. And then, you know, like I said, 2025 is the year of Dharmesh. So hopefully he'll be on here with us. That that's a goal I'd love to. So I keep throwing that out there nonchalantly as if like, you know, maybe one day he'll catch or something, or, you know, our VP Brian, or, you know, just any, you know, a lot of people that I would love to, and it doesn't even have to be HubSpotters either. Like, you know, other people like outside of HubSpot that are maybe in the tech realm, but like maybe at other places.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause, you know, I'm sure we've all worked with other people that are like really, really, Like I was telling Dennis, I think the very first episode, there's a— my manager when I worked at the real estate place, this guy Mark, who's just fantastic. He just— you can— he's like one of those people, like if you've ever met Sean Bristow here at HubSpot, that you can listen to them talk forever. It's just like they always sound like they know what they're talking about. They get right to the point. They have great analogies, great metaphors, and you could listen to them talk all day. Having conversations with that and getting to know people and what got them to that point. Fantastic. All the merrier, you know? So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We all started at zero, right? I mean, that's the thing, like every— from Dharmesh down, we all started at zero and we are all building our way up. So, you know, there's— we're all in this together.

Yeah. And that— okay, my other question too, which I think about a lot, because obviously, as you mentioned, and First of all, I feel so much a part of the community after doing this. So I'm like, ah, this has made me feel so awesome just to be able to do it. I wanted to just say that first and foremost. The second question I wanted to ask you guys is, you mentioned that we all have these different backgrounds and we're all starting from zero. And I think about a lot when I'm like, ah, did I almost start at a disadvantage? If I could go back, And study like something tech related or, you know, learn coding up front, like do computer science in college. Like, would I do that? And like, I'm curious, would, would you guys go, if you could go back and like set yourself up to be in this field a little bit better and change kind of what your expertise was, knowing that, like, let's say not knowing this is where you'd end up.

Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe, or maybe knowing, would you do it? Would you change things?

Yeah.

You want to start this one? You want me to take it? Go ahead. Yeah. I have my answer ready to go if you— I wouldn't change anything. I think I wouldn't be here if I changed anything. And, I studied English back in the day. I was a park ranger. I did all these things that are totally divergent from what I do now, but they also very much inform how I do things now. And, without that history, I mean, you take pulling those things out, and I don't know if I would be here at all anyway, right? Who knows? If I studied, you know, uh, computer science in school, I maybe I'd be an English teacher now.

Yeah, you would've just gone a different way. It's cool.

It seems more and more like that happens too, which is just crazy to me. But no, I, I mean, I agree with Dennis. Like, I think, um, I think at the end of the day, The weird journey that I took to get here, I think if I would have done anything differently, I don't think I would honestly be here. And plus too, like, I went to school and got my degree in psychology and I just, it's one of those things where I, the things I learned were out of date by the time I got out of school anyway. So it really kind of, because of the rapid—

Yeah.

And not turnover, but just the way things change so fast. It almost became obsolete where I could have picked anything. Honestly, I could have picked any degree at all because I went to Eastern Illinois. Go Tony Romo. Yeah, it wouldn't have changed anything really. It would have still been probably just as much obsolete now or not as useful because again, I don't use psychology pure, you know, except with Dennis when I mess with him. But yeah, it's just, you don't use it. And then at the end of the day, I think the unique path, especially coming up through real estate, just kind of taught me, taught me a lot. It was one of those things like how you were saying with the sales, like where you were thrown things or at the sales with the startup where you were kind of thrown everything so fast and it was like, it was either adapt, sink or swim. You know, basically it was same situation where it was like, well, if I don't figure this out, I don't think I'm going to be here much longer. So But yeah, it's, I don't think I would change a thing. Yeah.

I mean, every job, everything you do teaches similar, like there are things that like transcend a specific job, right? So whatever you're doing in the past is informing how you should be doing anything. This is just a job, you know, like it could be anything really. So yeah. And the things you think you should know, maybe start studying them now. You know, you're not dead, right?

HubSpot Academy.

That's true.

I know.

And yeah, you're right. Like stuff's moving so fast. For all I know, I might next week be like, oh, I don't even need to learn that thing I thought I needed to learn. I've learned something totally different now.

AI. No, that's very true. That's very true.

No, that's really cool to hear. That's interesting. I'm like, well, Dennis, at some point we have to dig into the park ranger thing.

There's some Yogi Bear vibes that I just, I have questions. I do. Yeah.

I need to know.

I, I, somewhere there's a— my— I tried to— it was on MySpace at one point in time, a photo of me in my park ranger shorts climbing a tree. And it is— I really am sad that that picture seems to be lost. I, I blame— who, who was it that bought MySpace?

I don't know.

Who do I blame?

I forgot. Should have put it on GeoCities to keep it safe.

It was a—

That's your fault.

That's true.

That's true.

Oh, okay. Last question. I mean, I have a billion, but last. I don't know why this is always something I'm really curious about. Um, what is your favorite ice cream flavor?

Wow.

First of all, I mean, you're talking to one person who can't— you don't consume ice cream.

The options are limited, uh, with the no sugar, uh, and it's, it's not— there's no such thing as sugar-free ice cream, really. It's always no sugar added, which is— there's a, there's a difference there. Like, like, I made the mistake once when I was a younger child, uh, cranberry juice, which has tons of sugar in it just in general, right? Uh, when I was younger, like, like real younger, like first as diabetic, there was, uh, I was thirsty and I saw this, it was cranberry juice, like not realizing that that has a ton of sugar regardless. It said no sugar added on, on the thing, so I'm like, oh, it must be okay to drink, I can have a little bit of it. No sugar added just means there's an extra sugar, still doesn't mean there aren't tons of carbs and sugar as cranberry juice tends to have. Uh, but drink it, just, yeah, it didn't work out well. Uh, but with ice cream, it's kind of like the same thing. Most ice cream is no sugar added. Most of it's Vanilla. Uh, you might get a Neapolitan, or Napoleon as I like to call it, uh, maybe sometimes. Um, but yeah, it's— the options are very few and far between. So yeah, I usually don't even eat it that often.

I think we can safely say that sugar-free ice cream is not actually ice cream. We can just take that whole category off.

Okay, okay. Is there— all right. Now I'm like, Nick, you would know best. Or I'm curious if you got into it, but I'm like, have you— are you in the alt sugar world? The stevia?

Yes.

The erythritol.

The stevia stuff, yes. The problem is like you buy pop with stevia, just you better be prepared to pay double what it would cost just to get Diet Coke. It's like, so at that point I'm like, I'll drink formaldehyde, sure, whatever. It's like, it's the aspect. I'm just not paying double for it. It's like, all right. Uh, but yeah, no, I've— a buddy of mine He is very into it as well as far as the alt sugars, and he was like originally he was the one who was telling me like have you tried the stuff with Stevie? Have you tried this stuff with Steve? And I was like no actually I haven't I haven't I'll try it I'll try it and I did pick and choose things here and there but that's the first thing I noticed was like yeah no this is great but it costs like double of everything else so I'm like it's very expensive yeah I think we have a show title by the way the alt sugar World.

Are you in the alt sugar world?

I like it.

I'm in it. Oh man. Okay. So I guess Napoleon's the best I got out of you for ice cream flavor and not even that.

So Napoleon.

Yeah. I think it's from The Simpsons. I believe The Simpsons is where I first heard it.

It's Napoleon. It's Napoleon.

I'm sorry. That's a reference. The So, I mean, the answer is a really good vanilla, honestly, like a very, very well-made vanilla. I do like pistachio quite a bit too.

Okay. Vanilla is a very bland answer, but okay. Oh, no, no, no.

That's the problem. You've not had a proper vanilla. Like, one that's actually done with good, real vanilla, homemade from the cow that you have in your backyard.

Naturally, that's the way to go.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. I have to say too, I come clean. I am in the alt sugar world. Most of the ice cream I eat is alt sugar ice cream, and I found ones that do taste—

You don't eat ice cream then, do you?

I was like, you're gonna— this is gonna be such a— this is where I've—

Oh my God, just dropped to zero viewers.

While you're driving, do you listen to your audiobook while eating some alt sugar ice cream?

I, I should be. I'm like, oh man, how— why haven't I thought of that? I mean, although that sounds a bit messy, but my favorite that I've had— okay, I've got 3, my top 3, and then my favorite. Very different. You're gonna hate— you're gonna actually— this might be what brings me to negatives, right? Coffee ice cream.

No, it's not wrong.

Love coffee ice cream. That's not too bad. Mint chocolate chip. That's so— that's 3 and 2.

The non-traditional, not ice cream flavors, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. Uh, but the number 1 is butter pecan. Absolute top favorite.

You are an old school ice cream eater.

Do you also like a Werther's Original?

I have a hard candy in the pocket of all of my jackets. I have Werther's Caramels in all of my jackets, and I've got butterscotches ready in case anybody wants a butterscotch.

I love Next time, if we ever see John in person, she doesn't offer us the Werther's Original, I'm gonna be disappointed.

I'll have them ready. I'll have them. They're literally in my jacket pocket right now, so I'll be— I'll— I will not disappoint, I promise.

There you go. I love it. Well, we're coming up on time, and I do want to say thank you so much for doing this. Uh, we appreciate it, and you have nothing to worry about. You did fantastic.

Oh, thank you.

It'd be great speaking with me at inbound. It's gonna be amazing.

I know. I can't wait. We're gonna have to work on that on our speech together.

Body's not even cold yet, Dennis.

Thank you, guys.

Wow! That is. Wow!

Okay.

No, I'm good. I'm good. I'm not gonna let my passion get the best of me here. That's fine. That's fine. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing.

Yesterday's news.

I love it.

Why?

Bringing it full circle. I love it.

No, seriously, thank you guys. This has been so much fun. And I told— I was nervous, and now I'm like, I feel like—

Why not? Yeah, yeah, if you want to, why don't you tell everyone where they can find you? And is there anything that you're working on that people might want to know about or anything like that?

Uh, I don't— there's nowhere anyone can find me. I don't I don't want to be found unless I'm out walking. Definitely say hi if you see me. Yeah. Well, I hope—

They won't know it's you, but they'll just see the book.

So I can see people. And so, yeah, find me while I'm walking with my book lens. Anything cool I'm working on? Obviously, we're all just hands down AI. So I think hopefully some exciting stuff to come on how we're going to define quality for our AI ecosystem and, and all the kind of the cool things that we'll put in place to make sure that we have trust and high-quality AI integrations, AI agents, whatever the next word that people are saying, you know, we'll be, we'll be on top of it. So, I'm excited to, to keep that stuff moving forward.

That's fantastic. Well, from everybody here at Developers After Dark, I just want to say thank you for watching. Thank you, Jana, for participating in a great conversation. Carter, we love you. Sorry about saying your last name wrong. And AJ, I guess we miss you a little bit, maybe. I don't know, we'll see. Yeah, he might be— I mean, it just depends. We'll see if we want him back. That's also the— gotta count.

Yeah, that's the question.

But yeah, and thank you everybody in the chat for also participating. Isaac, appreciate it.

Um, yeah, I, I think we might have said we need to count how many times you said Isaac this episode. Is it— this is like an affirmation.

You're the same thing with like, at the end of the day, is this the Is this what you're doing again? Pointing out, you're pointing out the phrases that I use. Oh, I overextend. Is that what it is?

See, I— Isaac, don't fire me. Isaac, don't fire me.

I didn't admonish you once this entire episode. I saved everything. Like, yeah, this is basically Isaac just watching for damage control. There's, there's no other, like, just to see, like, yeah, there's a tally of can fire Nick because, and then there's bullet points for every episode after that. So I see, I see how it is. I see how it is.

Timestamps. I wonder what you're gonna do when you get him on the podcast.

I mean, he's on the list. Everyone's like, Anton, you're on the list too. Like everyone's on the list of like guests and we're just like scheduling like, like years in advance now because we know, we know this will be around forever. We know that. Yeah. For sure. For sure.

Generations.

My kid, I'm, I'm prepping my 8-year-old for the, uh, the takeover at one point. Yeah. He'd do it.

To take over the house.

No, thank you again, everybody. I really appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, we'll see you next week. And Jonna, Thanks again. Appreciate it.

Thank you guys.

Bye.