Ep. 34 - A Design Link To The Future with Chad Pierce | Developers:After Dark

With that being said, here goes.

Hello and welcome to Developers After Dark, the show that makes null pointer errors feel like relaxing acupuncture. We are here today with a very, very awesome guest, a member of the community and good friends of all of us. We'll let him get to introducing himself in just a minute, but before we do that, I just kind of want to let you know that this is going to be the only site you're ever going to need and that's devs after darkpod.com One more time for Dennis. That's devs after darkpod.com. the reason for that is that's where you're going to be able to go back and see all of our previous episodes, learn a little bit more about the show. If this is your first, your first time watching it or if you've want to tell a friend about it and want to share it, we also appreciate that as well. But that's going to be the place to do it. You can watch all of our episodes as well on the HubSpot Developers Channel and that's going to be at HubSpot developers on YouTube. That is a place that you can go not only to watch us, but there are plenty of other things out there as far as instructional videos, things not just from hubspotters, but from the community as well. There's a wealth of knowledge there. It's one of those places you can go and lose yourself for hours watching Lose Yourself. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And a special little shout out too that I want to give because if you were, if you've been watching us for the last couple episodes, we just posted an episode last week about the HubSpot Developers website and AJ Ours truly here was one of the ones that helped kind of spearhead that and really work towards making that something absolutely fantastic. Just to kind of show everyone real quick here, we've got the website right here and you know, it's an amazing, an amazing redo of this website. I mean, there's, there's just so much here. And if you go back to the, the previous episode, I believe it's episode 33 or 32. We go, we talk with both AJ and we talk with Brooke, who were two of the people that helped make this huge humanly possible. So, you know, when you've got a chance, go ahead, take a look at that. There's also a little survey here that's going to help shape our roadmap for 2026. You know, depending on when you watch this video, go ahead and take that. Survey as well. Like, the feedback we get is always amazing and we appreciate it, we listen to it, and we action based on it. So go ahead and do that if you can. But we, again, aj, Brooke and Ashley and everyone else really appreciate the work. It was really, really a fantastic site redo.

Thank you. And if you do submit feedback on slash, feedback, we do actually read it like humans read that, so.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And I highly recommend just generally complaining about AJ for the feedback form if.

You'Ve got a chance. Yeah, of course.

Do it. It goes into our database. Like, it'll be out there. Go for it.

Now, you will notice, too, that Dennis is back this week and he came back at just the right week. Because I don't know if A.J. and Dennis, if, you know, there's something very, very, very special about this week. Do you. Do you. Do you know. Do you know what that is?

Is it mental health awareness? Right. Because that's. That's the month.

That's the month.

But Chad's here. There is.

It is actually the one year ver.

I was gonna guess that that is.

The cheesiest graphics thing you have done.

Not gonna lie. This is hanging on stream there for.

Way too long, trying to find all the things.

This is what happens when you leave me alone and don't supervise me. This is exactly what happened. But no, yeah, this is. This is our birthday week. So this has been one year since what me and Dennis sat in inbound and said, you know, we should. We should start a podcast. And from there. And then talked with AJ and then from there, this is snowballed. Yep.

Love.

Absolutely. Evolution. Evolution. And yeah, no, here's to hoping that there's, you know, at least another year.

Or two more of this.

At least, you know, so I want to at least hit a thousand episodes. That's kind of where we kind of want to be at. I. I would hope. Yeah. Oh.

So be prepared. Be prepared. This is going to get a lot.

Grayer over those years.

Yeah.

I'm sure if we literally played like a progression of all, like a montage clip, you would just see the gray just start coming in.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, why don't we. I'm going to let our guests introduce themselves and then we're going to get right into it. So, Chad, why don't you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

Oh, man. My name is Chad Pierce. I am the executive owner. No, I'm just the owner of a little firm called a design link. Ben. On. On my own, I started out in the. In the agency world, but where I was introduced to you. Fine, fine gentlemen. But I went on my own in 2018. I've been on my own ever since. We specialize in mainly CMS CRM integrations and web builds and a lot of. Lately a lot more integrations and stuff like that. But. But, uh, yeah, that's. That's who I am. Father.

Sorry.

No, long time.

You. You're CMS for a long time. So when. When did you actually make that leap over to the CRM side to do more integration stuff?

It just came naturally, like. So, like, I. I never stopped doing cms. That's still my bread and butter, and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. But the. The. The main. The main thing for me was that like a lot of the CRM, because HubSpot is HubSpot, the CRM integrates very tightly with the cms, so it's like a natural thing to want to be able to do stuff with the CRM as well. I don't. I don't. I wouldn't say that we do ginormous integrations. We're not like integrating a whole nother CRM and dub swat or anything like that in general, but we do. We do a lot of stuff that it becomes vital for our clients as far as integrating maybe their tool, their internal tools or something like that, so that they can. The data that can then be used in the CMS parts and CRM parts.

And.

So.

Nice.

How about. I was curious, like, how did you first. Like, what first sparked your interest in technology in general? Or was there a. In like an interest at the very, very beginning?

So I actually have a degree in drafting and architecture, so. Or most of a degree anyways. I actually got out. I actually got. I dumped it before I got my bachelor's. But the. I was always interested in art, so drawing, that kind of thing. And my. My parents would. Would get after me because I would ignore them because I was literally in a. Like an encyclopedia or something like that, copying pictures out of the encyclopedia. That's. That was my. That was my childhood and pre. IPhone and. And so it just kind of grew from there. I had a couple jobs where they're like, hey, we were. We just fired this guy that was doing ads. Do you think you might be able to learn how to use Photoshop or, you know, it's 2000 or. Yeah, it's like 2005. And we need a. We need a simple website. You know, what. What can we do? Well, I Can learn.

Have you heard of tables? No. I'm just kidding.

Believe it or not, I started right at the end of like when tables are, I mean, not, not a great way to build the web. I came in, in floats. If anyone, yeah. So if anybody out there is like, I remember those. If you know the word clear, float. All our clear.

All right. It's always a clear.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that, you mentioned that you mentioned some of the art. Was there any type of. Because I, I, I remember at least through high school and into some community college. I did a lot of. Was there like painting, draw, like any type of.

It was mainly pencil drawing.

Okay.

So just, just pencil. Pencil art. But it's like, because I have like this back of this, the studious background in architecture. What happened was I learned a lot. Like, not, not I, I still enjoy architecture to this day. Like, don't get me wrong, what I did not want to do was like some engineers, red lines all day long every day for 20 years. You know, like I didn't expect somebody else's design. So what I decided to do is just go a different direction. So I went into like sales and the marketing and the, the design part. I, I kind of intermingled the two because I was able to take like, okay, so I kind of understand how people think and how people act how, and you know, what makes for some, what makes for a good experience. So I was able to use that in design and development. And so I, in architecture, you have to design how something's going to be built. So. And back then, because the web still is kind of sort of infancy still, like there's still the kind of the wild west going on, a lot of people were still designing the web as though they would design like a, like a magazine cover or something like that. Super difficult to do those kinds of things. So I took it upon my shoulders to build things or design things that were actually buildable. Appreciated that and I kind of like, hey, this could be a career. And so I literally started going door to door, like as a salesperson that I was third going door to door businesses and like knocking on doors. And it's like, I can do these things. I can do your ads, I can do your websites. And everybody's like, yeah, we don't need ads, but we need a website. We need a website, we need a website. And that's really where it came from.

Yeah, I always remember the days where you like early on where you get handed like, let's say it was like a, you know, a photoshop file or something to build and you look at the design and be like, I, yeah, bro, I don't know how we're going to do that now.

Slice tool. Just saying.

Yes.

Are you.

Isn't there an HTML button in Photoshop?

Right.

Can I push that?

Dreamweaver.

Right, yeah.

Build it all in Dreamweaver. It's fine.

Let me ask you, Chad, because I know you mentioned, I know you said, had said that you use Dreamweaver. Like did you ever get any kind of like, like I remember, I can't remember how far back this was, but I was moving from one job to the other and they asked me like, what are some of the tools that I use? And I had mentioned Dreamweaver just like in passing. Right. It wasn't like one of the main ones that I used as far as like, you know, like you would like a Sublime or something else. Not, you know, at a certain point. But like the person who was interviewing gave me like the weirdest look and said like, oh, so you use a wysiwyg. I was like, it rubbed me such the wrong way because I'm like, that's not the intention of me using it. Like I would still like co. And it was. Did you ever get that?

So, so I was in and out of Dreamweaver within a month. So I quickly realized how difficult it was to make. To make web pages that looked like, not just look good, but like the word that looked the same. We were. And especially back then it was like Photoshop version 7. So Dreamweaver. I think Dreamweaver was still Macromedia, right? Yeah, it was, it was a. You know, everybody was raving about how good, you know, Flash was and I was not the Flash guy. Like I, I thought it was awesome, but like I went down the different, I went a different direction so Than everybody else, which ended up working out good for me. But, but yeah, Dreamweaver was very, very short lived. Like I was like, if I'm gonna actually do this, I need to be able to understand what's going on under the surface here. So I quickly. I still was using Dreamweaver, but I wasn't using the WYSIWYG part. I was using the HTML editor part. And then I was, this is like, this is terrible. So then I started using Coda. Back in the day Koda was. And technically Coda, the company still exists. Panic, I think is the name of the company. Yep. I got a whole nother code editor. But, but, but then eventually obviously VS code came around. But, but, but I went through a couple different iterations. Sublime, I think, was another one.

Yeah, that I. I use Sublime mainly because of the Emmett extension for like the quick coding.

That was a big deal, bro.

That was a good.

You remember text wrangler. That was my first code ed.

I remember there. There was back then, there was. It was like today, like with AI is today. Like, there's so many popping up everywhere. Yeah, it was the same code editors and stuff. So I was like, I. If I keep switching around, I'm never going to get anything done. There's one life, man.

That's.

That's point.

Yeah.

Yeah, there was.

Yeah, there was a point in development where I was just like. Because everybody, like, I'd start. I'd started a place and they'd be like, oh, you gotta use Sublime. And then it was like, switch to the next thing and the next thing. And like, at one point in one year, I had flipped like, like you're saying Chad. Like, I flipped between three of them and I was like, oh my God, I'm never gonna get anything done. Cause I have to, like the extensions. I had to go back and find the extent. And it was just, like I said, more time and setup than I did an actual, like, doing something. And it was. And I didn't realize it till it was too late, obviously, but I look back and I was just like, wow, that was a big waste.

Yeah, I had to learn that really quick, man. Super quick. Because like I said, I. I was. I was trying to build something and like switching code editors and everything just wasn't like I. I was just like hyper focused on learning the actual, the actual underpinnings. And it wasn't until like 2010. 2010 is when I really, like when I started working for. If I'm allowed to say their name, Blue Leads. You might need to bleep that out. But, but, but Blue Leads, which is now an elite partner, I believe, last time I checked. And I was with them for six years. So like Eric Baum, God bless that man.

He.

He like introduced me into the world of HubSpot and, and, and. Like early 2010. Like, we're talking like early 2010. And like January, February. And so like, I was like before the CMS existed, any of that stuff. Like, he was like, he's like, here we got this, this blog that we need this custom design on. I'm like, well, where do you edit the CSS at? Because I'm used to like using HTML or php. And he's like this little bitty box that has no. No anything and you have to important everything. That was where I started.

So.

And then, yeah, 2013, I believe is when the CMS, the beta launched in 2013. And that was right around the time that, that I was like, I, I came. I was actually in South America for three years and I came back. I came back to the states like late 2012, early 2013. And. And that's when I got the hold of the CMS and was like, this is a game changer for HubSpot. Like, I started this stuff and I, I knew the, the engineers knew me by name because I was calling them literally like 20 times a day, being like, hey, this is not working right. Can you help me fix it? And they would like email me back like 15 minutes later and be like, try it now. And it would be fixed. So like, that was before. The CMS is obviously many generations away from that removed. But. But that was, that was where I started out with Blue Leaves doing that stuff and just snowballed. Similar to the podcast.

I remember that, like, we, we had our. We had like a group chat, a bunch of us, and we were in like.

Yeah, I remember that.

That was a lot of fun too. And I remember like, yeah, we were always like blown away by the response times. And I'm going to call him out, Matt Coley. He was detrimental. Like, you'd be sitting there. Like, we actually joked and thought he was a robot for a little bit, that there was like an autoresponder because he was responding to us at random times of the day.

But, like the first AI chatbot ever existed.

Honestly, like, it was a real person.

Yeah, I want to say he was the first non, like, leader type person that was requested for a hug. Like, he was one of the first engineers ever to be requested for like a develop or it was a developer focus, but a HubSpot user group. And we kind of, like, we kind of shocked him. I think is like, he wasn't expecting either. We're like, no, we want you to come here and explain this developer stuff. And he's like, that's not what hugs are for. And we're like, it is now.

Come on. Like, it changes the mold. Right? Let me, let me ask you, Ted, what are. When you first got started as far as like, the career path that you're on now, what were some of the things that first surprised you? Because I know you just mentioned, like, when you first saw HubSpot, you felt it was like a game changer and like, were there other Things like when you first got into this career path that kind of surprised you or kind of like took you off guard.

Man, I was, I, I think I had like rose colored glasses honestly, because I was so enamored by the fact that he could like build something and like everybody could see it and you didn't have to have like a publisher's license or anything like that. You just had and you know that people would actually give me the opportunity to build something for them. And then when I started working for, for Eric Baum at Blue Leads, it was, it was a. We were literally, I was, there was one guy he hired before me before I got to the United, back to the United States. And so I was literally like employee number one or two for Blue Leads back when he started it up and, and it was a, it was like, like I said it was kind of wild Westy feeling, but it was like in a good way. Like it's like all hands on deck, kind of military militaristic in, in a sense that all had a goal and we were just trying to build, build stuff and trying to figure out this whole inbound thing. And, and you know, I, I always had this. Because I came from sales and marketing. I always had this. I didn't, I didn't just have a, a mental, I didn't have any type of mental block when it came around for like dealing with people or, or being able to understand how like sales worked or, or marketing worked. I, I kind of understood it. And so, and so that was, that always helped me advance or, or work with my clients, you know, and work with the other marketers because you know, I understood why marketers always came for, always came back to the developer for little stupid things like changing the color of a piece of text or you know, you know, I mean not that it was super easy to do some things back in the original cms, but, but I always had this like conviction that I'll like make it easy for the marketer to modify and that was that to this day that's like my mantra. And so like when I'm building something, I'm like over building it. But, but to answer your question directly, nothing surprised me except for everything really because such Earth is so early that everything, that everything that I was experiencing was for the first time. So you know, when I needed to do something and I didn't know how to do it, there was nobody else like there for me to do it. And when I first started there was maybe like two or three websites like Smashing Magazine, was just starting. Just starting. Websites were vital in my, my, you know, my enrollment in the Mastering All Things Web.

And I think there's a, there's, there's probably a very not enough appreciation that goes into like someone who can also or someone who has the experience like, like you do in, on the marketing side of things who then goes into the development side of things and is able to kind of the best way I, I, I always put it is it's sort of like, it's sort of, it's sort of like a translator that's between two languages. Like, like figuratively and not literally as in like C sharp and something else, but like that communication always. I feel like most places don't appreciate it or don't realize how important it truly, truly is when they have it to be able to kind of bridge that gap. But you know, from, from what you're explaining, like you've, you had the experience in the marketing aspect beforehand, so it kind of gave you that sort of, is it safe to say, like, sort of like almost like inside knowledge of like how to, the, how the communications should, should go back and forth?

Well, you're right, like it like you're able to speak, you're able to speak on, at a level that, that they, that they understand and you can, you can talk to them about what they understand, you know. And so, so like I, I just, I never obviously you never like to, you know, talk on top of somebody or over somebody but, or in a way that they don't understand. But, but yeah, I, it, but it, I think it was more than just being able to speak to them. It was like being able to really like get what, what they're trying to accomplish, you know, and understand, understand those things and thereby being able to make it happen and if it wasn't possible to do, figure out, figure out a way to actually do it, you know, like or, or some semblance of what they're looking for, you know, because that was another thing with the early, especially the early HubSpot. Like it wasn't everything. I mean it had a lot of it. They added, they kept adding stuff on and when the CRM got added, that was when they really, hubs are really started to like grow dramatically. But when they added the true cms, that was, that was groundbreaking for me. But there's still, it was still limited, right? It really was limited. So we had to, we had to figure out ways to, to do what the client wanted. And you know, sometimes we were faking it, you know, frankly, you know, when things like the Hubble and the Hub DB tables and things like that were just like transformative in my world, like unlike most people today, a lot of people today are like, they're kind of like I'm going to use this in air quotes and I don't want to offend anybody but full stack developers and I was never a full stack developer, I was always a front end developer. So I hyper focused on CSS, JavaScript and HTML and then in all the connections between there and I did, I was dangerous enough with like WordPress and stuff to build a theme and, but like HubSpot took the, it gave me the ability to, HubSpot gave me the ability to figure out a templating language that was not overly complex and it made sense to me. So you know, because I came out of a world of other templating languages that were not the same but very similar and so, and the fact that I didn't have to maintain a site server and all that stuff was, yeah.

And I was, I was reminded of the conversation we had with Nathan Gifford about The like the 10,000 plugins that you had to update at any given time. It was bad like PHP version switches to like, you know, whatever 5.2 and it's like oh yeah, everything you, nothing works. Congratulations.

And then you needed a plugin to alert you when your other plugins were on.

Right?

Seriously, Right. Do you think the update, plug the update button at all costs kind of thing?

You, you believe Chad, that the value that you add by being able to speak to the marketer being, you know, a developer is something that is still like the newer generations, are they able to do that or they, as you said, are these full stack developers going in. They have no idea how to really make that translation to the market.

I, I get what you're asking. Like I, it, I'm feeling, I'm, I, I, I'm gonna take a step back because I'm kind of dealing with something like this with my son and the, I think there's this like almost at least in my son's generation, my son's 20, there's like this fear to, to, to step out. I don't know why, maybe it was because of COVID or I don't know what it is but, but I read the other day that like 70 of generation, generation Z has had their parents go to an interview or sit in an interview with them at one point or another. I did read that.

70.

Insane. Insane to me like, and so like I, I had this Ability to put myself out there and learn different things. So, like, when I. When I've been working since I was 14 years old, so. So I started out like dishwasher. So I worked in the kitchen. Worked in the kitchen for like six years. And then I went from that to, like, doing something else, washing cars or something. And then I, you know, I was helping a friend of mine, you know, rebuild, like, old cars, and then I was doing other things. And eventually I got into sales and. And then sales led to art and design, and then design led to development. And so, like, and then through schooling and all that stuff too, some of the techniques and philosophies that I learned in school and in architecture and drafting school, those. I took all that and I kind of compounded it over time, and that's, that's kind of where I am, where I'm at. So I'm not expecting everybody to have to go through that. I mean, I did it out of necessity, but I think there's something to be said for people that like, like, put themselves out there and just like, learn us. Learn something new. Yeah, like, you know, like going to school and like, learning how to code react. Like, are you missing something? Like, you know, okay, maybe start with JavaScript. But there's this. There's a whole nother side of the world that doesn't exist in a, in a computer. And, and the, the thing that I would like to. I would like to get across to the younger generation especially is that, is that these other things aren't. Aren't just different. Like, you can actually learn things from them and then apply them to your daily jobs. You know, you know, whether it's just like, like, if you, if like somebody, it's, It's a. It reminds me of people that maybe started in tech and then moved to sales. And the reason why they do that is because they understand how it works and they can easily sell. They understand people. Yeah, well, I'm advocating for the reverse.

Yeah.

So like, so like somebody who is originally a marketer or a salesperson, maybe out of necessity learning how to design and develop websites or, or now, now with AI, you know, people learning how to vibe code apps and stuff. And that just, it's scary and it blows my mind how easy some of this stuff is nowadays. Blows my mind.

I think there's something to be said too about kind of that into the, you know, out of the frying pan and into the fire type of, like, experience that I. And I don't know if, like, that still exists. You Know, today in a lot of, like, industries. And plus two, I, I do assume it. It depends on, like, the size of the organization in which you're. Because, like, I'll be on it. Like, and Dennis is back this week, so bringing up real estate seems very, you know, in a brokerage where there's, you know, where you have a staff or from at least from the technical side, in the dozens, if not into the hundreds, you're not going to get that same sort of like. And I always use the story. I, you know, at the place I worked at, it was when SEO started to become a thing. It was like, do you know it? I'm like, no. Well, you're gonna.

And that was it.

Conversation. So I think a lot of that doesn't happen as often, if at all anymore. Which I think there's a, there's a, there's an experience there, like you're saying where it's. You may not be. That may not be the thing you. You like, were. You had the focus was on. But like, learning that, that stuff.

I think that's where we are with AI at this point. AI. I mean, obviously nothing stays new forever, right? But right now we're. It's been out a few years, but, like, it. This last year has literally been like, what I feel like the launching point. True. True. AI. My daughter, my youngest daughter is going to be AI Native.

Yeah, yeah.

She just is. You know, she's eight years old. She's learning how to use technology and stuff already. I didn't even know there was. I didn't even know the word tablet. I thought if. I thought that was like the Ten Commandments, you know, when I was, you know, that was word. That's how I grew up. So, you know, I was these. They. That's not. That doesn't exist anymore. A tablet is an iPad, you know, you know, an iPhone. You know, these things did not exist when I was growing up. So all these, all these young, these young kids that are now growing up to become teenagers and then adults, they're going to be a native. AI Natives. And what are, what's, what's left before that, it's us. And we kind of have to pave the way for them. But. But we also have to learn what it is, how to use it correctly.

Not just throw somebody into it and be like, best of luck. I love it.

Because exactly what you're saying does translate across.

Right?

Like, it translates in your job, but it translates in parenting too. Like, there's new things happening. You have to Keep up with it or you're not going to understand it. Because like my daughters are nine and the same thing. I show them a picture and they're.

Like, oh, that's cool.

Is that AI? I'm like, no, it's literally like your Uncle Nick. Like, no, it's not AI. Yeah, yeah.

What's real. What's not real is gonna get real muddy here soon.

Yeah. I have said that's probably the hardest part is not only just like educating kids, but like educating co workers, educating others of like, hey, you saw something really cool. Guess what? That's not really a real thing. Like, yeah, we gotta make it. But that's not, it's not that easy.

So I use, I use AI for many things though. Like I, I use it like I use with my daughter. Like I'll sit in bed with her. I haven't done this in a while actually, I should do that soon. But I'll just pull up chat GPT and, and I'll ask her like what she wants to a store hear a story about.

Yeah.

And I'll just chat GPT will like literally generate a story and then you can either tell it to read it to you or you know, I can read it to her or have her read it now because she's reading now.

And you can do like the. Choose your own adventures too. Like you can. It's crazy.

Yeah. So you know things like it's. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate it not just into my professional life, which I already have, obviously, but also in my, my everyday life. Because where, where, where do I want this to actually be involved in? Because like, I've already got like Alexa in every room. Although I don't view Alexa as being like an AI, although it probably is going to be soon. But, but the, you know, we already have that kind of thing listening to us everywhere, every day, everywhere, you know, so, you know, like we. I always take my family on like road trips and get them to see the world because seeing it through a screen, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, like what's going to be real and what's not going to be real is going to be very difficult to tell. So like showing them, showing them the. What actually exists in the world. Like two years ago we went to Niagara Falls and that was, I mean that just floored my kids. How, how majestic that was. And that's something you can't get from AI. That's grass.

When you're talking about the, you know, the, the storytelling, all that and Also back to when you said you went door too, like trying, you know, sell, you know, businesses. The social aspect of things is what I'm actually most chief worried about. You know, and the fact that, I mean, using a.

Is cool.

That's great. And the fact that you did it as a family, I think is, you know, so important.

Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm. I'm. I'm a huge family person. But. But it, the. I'm sure our parents were worried about other things that are, that were happening in our worlds when we were coming up, our generation coming up, but it seems like. It seems like things are progressing faster than they used to, you know, for sure. You know, with technology, begetting technology, it's not, it's not like I'm human, has to do everything anymore. Like, you know, we're. We're literally generating stuff with AI that would have taken months sometimes to do. And we can do it in what seems like an afternoon.

I remember, I remember talking with AJ about just like with our dad and just about the, the policing aspect of it where it just. Just being able to like safeguard. That was never like when, when our, you know, when we were growing up, like, you know, our dad was a programmer for the county here and you know, it was like. It was Dawes programming, essentially. Right. Yeah. You know, you know, black screen, green letters. And it wasn't like. So when, when that computer was in the house, we weren't worried about like, well, what are the kids viewing online? What YouTube channel or what YouTube are they watching? And it was just like. Yeah. The progression from that, it just. It blows minds, you know? Yeah.

Back then you didn't care. Yeah. I still remember the first time I, I clicked on YouTube.com. yeah. I was like, what?

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just. It's one of those things that I feel like the worries from one generation to the other are always there and they're probably similar in some respects, but I think just the amount of things. Yeah. And the complication. And the complication, like keeping your kids safe, you know, in general has always been a worry, but like the, the nuance to it is just. There's so much. And it's not just in one avenue anymore. It's not just the computer, like you said, like a tablet, a phone, like your, the refrigerator, like your Samsung that, you know, that the kids are tweeting from. It's like, okay, you know, there's so much more. And it's. Yeah, it gets, it's very complex, but I Think like you were saying, I like the. I like the approach that you have that you make it. Because it's somewhat of an inevitability like, like what Thanos says. Thanos is essentially AI. I am inevitable. It's. But it. You're doing it in the sense of, like, as a family, as a. You know what I mean, to be there, to not, not control it. But you're, you're, you're helping usher that in from the family aspect as a group. And I think that that's fantastic because.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, my daughter is. My oldest daughter is in university now. Now I've got a big gap between my. My youngest and middle. But the. She. She. Some of her classes allow them to use AI or specific or particular AI.

Right.

Other. Others are, you know, heavily against it. You know, there. There's a lot this. We are in the Wild west right now when it comes to AI. So like, there's a lot that's going to change, I'm sure, in the next five to 10 years, but I don't think it's gonna go away. It may be. It may quiet down because it just becomes a part of your daily life. But, you know, when you go to the, when you go to the, you know, to get your prescription filled at the pharmacy, it may be a. Maybe a talking to a computer in 10 years, you know, you don't know.

Yeah, I always imagine like, what was it. Was it iRobot with Will Smith with the robots walking around? Like, that's Because I think that's the. I, I think that's the kind of weird thing too, because, like, depending on who you are and how much exposure you've had to like AI, just in general as far as, like, making things better, there are people on one team that believe that that's what's going to happen, and then there are people on the other team that are more like. It's hybrid. It's more of a. It's replacing repetitiveness or redundancies and things like that where you have these two camps that are wildly different as far as, like, there's, you know, the Terminator versus Oh, no, it's going to be the Jetsons. It's.

There's a very, like, you know what I mean?

There's a. There's no gray area so far that I've seen.

I've got this, this philosophy around AI when it comes to work that I. It is, it is only a tool. So like. So like, I try not to. I don't use it to replace me. Okay. But I use it to make me more efficient when I'm, when I'm actually working. So like, for instance, I needed to, I had a, this is at the beginning of the year, this year, but I had a client of mine that had a. They deal in AI when it comes to like, not Big Brother, but like, if you go to a stadium or something like that, there's cameras everywhere and they want to be able to track like say somebody that's suspicious with a package or something across multiple cameras, or they want to be able to track, to detect things like fires or somebody left the door open or whatever, and they're using AI to do that. But they needed a, they needed a tool that allowed somebody to go in and say, hey, I've got, I've got this many cameras on this channel and this many on this channel and this many on this channel. And here's all the different, the different tools that I want to be used, the AI tools that I want for that particular channel and then output a range of, or the number and range of different servers that they're going to need to run this. Okay? And, and it was a pretty, pretty intense algorithm. And all I, all I was, all I needed to do was use before it would have been much longer. It would have taken me probably a month to build that. But the algorithm, the, the, the algorithm to do it was built within like two to three days, just testing. Just because AI was able to generate the math that I needed to do it.

Right.

And then I, you know, you can. I use it to test my code as well. So like, if I, or explain to me what's going on, like, like for instance, I get, I get into a chunk of code that I've never seen before and I, it's going to take me an entire day to read this to figure out what the heck's going on. I just literally copy or now it's in the, it's in the editor now. You know, explain this file to me like I'm a fifth grader and, and it will explain the file to you step by step on what's going on. And so things like, those are the things that make me feel good about AI is that it, it allows the, it allows like in my kit, my, my, my instance, the developer to do maybe do things that I took longer for me to do before or had. Maybe I had to, because it took longer, I had to hire them out a lot more. You know, whereas like before, you know, I'm, for me, it Made it take an entire day. Somebody else, it might have taken them two, three hours. So it was cheaper for me to just pay somebody to do it. Now I can do a lot of that stuff myself because. Because the tool helps me a lot. You know, I understand what I'm trying to do. I understand what it takes mostly to do it. But then that little edge that you get from AI that. That kind of helps you along and figures. Figures out the complicated stuff that maybe, maybe you get stuck on, you know, that I would. I would spend hours and hours in stack overflow on or something like that. I don't have to do that anymore. You know.

I've used it to help me do. Like, I'm the worst when it comes to. You know how they say, like, show your work, like when you're in school, like, oh, you do your math work. I'm the worst at writing PR summaries. Like, I know what I did and I can explain it, how I did it, but like, other people may read that and go, I don't know. So, like, I literally created a rule that literally goes. And it just. It basically gives a summary of what I did in like three paragraphs and then gives full details of like, how to test, how to do this, how to do that.

And it's a rule I set up.

So I just got to mention it every time. And then it goes in and checks on my. My PR stuff.

So it's like.

For me, that was easier because I could explain it to the more technical folks, but also have this like, summary paragraph.

The. The. That. That's a great example. Like, my. I hate documentation. Like, I hate creating documentation. So like, you, you literally. I've been. I've been using Claude lately, and in Claude, all I have to do is tell. Look into the, the piece of code that I'm. Or the block of code, maybe it's a few files and be like, hey, can you make a readme for this? And it, it just spits. And there's a lot of times I have to go in and make some modifications to it and stuff like that. But. But the, the act of actually generating the file and like all the, all the example code and stuff like that, it just does it. And that. That was the, the arduous part for me. It was like doing that stuff. So like allowing it to do those things for me, whereas before, you know, it would. It would take me an hour or two to do that. And that's an unpaid time for me. So, you know, it just kind of helps me along, you know, and it actually helps me help other people easier too because before you just put like a piece of code up there and like pray, pray to the code gods that they understand how it's going to work, you know? Yeah. Making the documentation, you know, so. And you know, make it, dude, like seriously, like. And I mean this is all genuality, genuine being super genuous. Creating an example website for the code, the code library that you just generated. You can now do that like within like five minutes using Clock. And it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to show the example of what you're trying to do. And then turning that into a GitHub page is like effortless. Yeah. So there's a, there's a lot that stuff that I just didn't do before because I had to work, frankly.

Yeah.

I'm finding myself using tools like that. Even like Lovable is a good one. Right. Like a lot of people probably seen or heard of that. I was playing with it because like for instance, we have a bunch of old like 45 records that our grandmother had. Right?

Okay.

And I was like, I'm like I gotta catalog these. But I'm like, okay, well am I gonna sit there on a spreadsheet manually typing then doing whatever? No, I just went to Lovable. Two hours later I've got a working prototype where I just take a picture with my phone. It take it because I think with Lovable, it's got, I think it uses Claude in the background or chatgpt5 or something to do its own AI but like literally it's analyzing the images and it's just pulling all the info for me. So now I'm just taking pictures. That's great.

I just saw a post where somebody tried to create their own. It's like a version of Netflix but they sourced like open sourced and legitimate and legal like feeds of like different channels or different shows and different things and like put it together in their own like version of Netflix for themselves. I don't know if it was Lovable. It could have been. I. Who knows? Like at this point, like every time I try to watch a YouTube tutorial, like I get bombarded with at least 5 to 10 different lovables or base 44s or something like that. Like I can't. It's insane because like you said, Chad, there's like a million of them at this point and it's like exploding exponentially. But yeah, that was one that I saw that I thought was really, really interesting where it's like they're not even, it's not that they're not creating something new, but they're just taking something that's more of an enclosed, more of a walled off if you will, by pay and just saying, well, I'm going to create the same thing except with free open source resources. So it's impressive what they can do.

It is pretty crazy. I mean, you know, there. But, but, but it's always, for me it always goes back to how does that tool make my life easier and allow me to not have to focus so much on non billable items or non helpful items for me, at least in my world, you know. You know, whereas, whereas before, before I just ignored it, you know, I mean frankly it, it's, it's not that that's a good thing. I don't recommend that. But when, when you're, when you're, I mean myself and I. You're doing sales and you're doing, you know, you're doing development, you're doing design, you're doing the teaching, you're having meetings and all this stuff I need, I need more time in my day. So this tool that allows me to capture some of that time, you know, I definitely do not trust it to do everything because yes, I mean for, for God's sake, right now it, it, sometimes it creates some absolutely terrible stuff. But, but I've learned, I've learned, I've learned to prompt better and, and that kind of thing. So it helps a lot. But one of my favorite features of Claude is the projects feature and you know, put projects together. So it's this kind of like self contained knowledge base of information about a project that I'm working on and it makes it easier for it to, to like understand the context of what I'm looking for.

So I think Gemini does that too.

I'm sure all of them are copying.

Each other, but yeah, there's so many out there and there's just so many popping up. One of the sites that I came across is called lmarena AI and basically it's like a battleground. Like you can ask a question and it will go through all of the ones that are out there and show you stats of people who are saying which one's better. That's they have a battle feature where you could say like describe like a web page and like take versus chatgpt and see what builds better and then you vote. Like yeah, it's really, it's really interesting but like it just goes to show you like how many there are out there, and, like, there's so much that they can do that.

Are you guys paying for subscriptions or. No, no, no.

I just. I just came across the site to see it and test it. I haven't. I haven't, like, really dove into it, but they have, like, a leaderboard where, like, all the votes go for people, so you can see, like, who's voting, like, what's doing best for general answers or coding in a certain degree and. And things like that.

So it was, like.

It was a really interesting find.

My Google feed today had an article. I haven't read it yet, but the. The title is something of the fact that people love Chad GPT so much. Nobody's paying for it or it becomes popular. Nobody's paying for it, you know, like. Like. So I'm curious to know if you guys pay for your own subscriptions or. Or.

I don't have a paid subscription yet.

No.

No.

Really? Well, I take that back.

I did.

I did sign up for it myself for, I think, like, a month or two, but. But I think the reason I stopped was because. To kind of go along with what you were saying earlier, Chad. It was just the. Like, I was using it to create, like, to generate images and stuff, and I just. I. I like it, but sometimes I just don't trust it because, like, it makes me look like a. Like, I was doing the stuff for the podcast, and, like, it was me, AJ And Dennis's picture, and. And I was putting it together and making, like, a montage for the site, and it would always make them look. Well, one. It would make AJ look seven feet tall, and totally. We're not tall people. And then I would look like I was 12 years old. Every single time, no matter what, I would look like this little kid next to big Dennis and big AJ and it was. It was. I. It was insane. No matter how I prompted it, it was like, yeah, no, I think you're a child. I don't care.

That's funny you say that because, like, you see these ads for, like, make a. Make a profile shot or whatever. It's these AIs that's supposed to do this especially. And every time I even attempted that, I just. It was. It becomes this hilarious thing in my household because it makes me look like somebody. It's like. It's like if somebody tried to draw me from memory and it wasn't quite right, like, my nose would be too big or my lips are too small or my ears are, you know, in the wrong place or some weird things, and Not. It didn't look unreal. It just didn't look like me. You know, it looked like. Looked like my cousin or something like that.

So it wasn't a glamour shot is what you're saying.

I thought. I thought, you know what? I could take one of my existing pictures and make a more modern photo out of it, you know, and it did not work at all.

That's. That's the one thing that always worried me. Like, so, like, you know, like, I have a Pixel phone, right? So, like, I could take pictures. I could use AI to clean things.

Up and do things.

And it's like, sometimes I don't want to, like, you know, like, and. And like, I have twin girls. So, like, for me, it's like, if one's not smiling, I could just copy paste a smile from one or the other, none the wiser, right? But, like, at the same time, it's like, I. I just. Yeah.

Here's a perfect example. I wanted to bring this up. Here's a perfect example what Dennis and AJ send me when they're. When they're in their free time, basically, ice cream socials. And I, being a diabetic, I don't normally. Just don't eat ice cream in general. And so this is what AJ and Dennis decided send me. AI generated. So I was like, okay. I'm like, that's. That's great, guys.

I'm like, real quick, you can see it looks nothing like us.

No, it got me. But it made the two of them look like. I don't even know who those people are. I have no idea.

So, I mean, Dennis looks like the guy from Arrested Development.

I know.

The.

The dyes himself blue, right?

No, no, no. The. The. The son that ends up with the hook as a hand.

No, that's the. Oh, yeah, I'm thinking of. Yeah, I'm thinking of Tobias. No, yeah, I know what you're talking about. He's also in a couple of other things, too, where he plays, too. Like that.

Yeah, but that's, like, AI like that.

Like, hard to trust.

Sometimes it's fun, but like, other times, like, I don't like, when it comes to, like, our family pictures and things like that. I don't want AI or anything.

Absolutely not. I. I had a. I had one the other day. Speaking of Pixel phones, we took a picture at the beach, and the. And we did. The guy who used my phone to take a picture, his head was, like, down in the bottom corner, and it only caught, like, the edge of his head, and he had hair like, his head hair was kind of spiky, so I used the Pixel phone to kind of crop him out of the image, and when it did, it turned his hair into a. Into a seagrass bush.

That's awesome. I can relate. I can relate. It happens. Yeah, I can relate.

Oh, that was awesome. That's thinking. That's using your head there.

Let me ask you this. Let me transition to this one a little bit, because one of the answers that you gave us. I really liked it because there was a lot of really. It's almost like really good advice within. Within the answer, but it was like milestones and pivotal moments in your career thus far. Because I know you had mentioned. You had mentioned something about there was a certain piece of learning that you had that I thought was just. It was a really nice piece.

Oh, man.

What? What? What?

Let's see here.

You had mentioned that learn. You. I've got it, actually, because I. It really was. It was learning that just because you don't know something doesn't mean you can't know it, which I think is.

Yeah, that's. It is just about what I talked about earlier, where you. Where back in the day, I had to scratch to learn something. You know, like you fought to learn something. There was like a. There's like a kill what you eat kind of mentality. But that is. That's something that I think, going back to our earlier conversation, that's something I think a lot of. A lot of younger people have kind of lost. They don't. They. I don't know if they don't want to do that or whatever, but you. You can garnish a lot from doing something else. So like figuring something else. Like there's a saying to be. To learn something, truly learn something, you teach it. So, so you know, when. When, if you want to. If you want to figure out something, like for instance, if you never use next js, for instance, ever before and you need to learn it, then there's this tree of learning that you can go through. But quite frankly, you can just learn next js.

You can learn how.

You can figure out how to do it and figure out how to get something done. That is the idea behind it. But that spreads throughout all of life too. You know, like these days, I don't do much in the way of like, mechanic work or anything like that, but I like, I grew up as. With a grandparents and a parent as a mechanic. So like, you know, I learned. I garnished that. I learned that from my. From my dad and My grandfather. I learned how to believe, believe it or not, if I, I probably could still do it. I learned how to crochet for my great grandmother.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I learned how to, I learned how to cook. I learned how to detailed cars from one job that I had. And just because somebody, I asked a question and somebody took the time to invest into me. And so I don't know if you want to call it tutors or if you want to call it, you know, whatever you want to call it, teaching, mentorships, but like looking for those kinds of things, especially if you don't know how to do something. Like I get the question all the time from, from these kids that are in university around me, they're like, like, well, I want to do this. What, what do you, what do you, what places do you think I should go to learn it? And I was like, well, first of all, you don't need to, you can learn a lot in university, but you absolutely don't need to go to university to learn how to build websites.

Right.

There's a hands on approach there that is.

Yeah, absolutely.

That, yeah, that's, it's, it's, it's going to be very hard to mimic that in like a, like a textbook learning style setting.

But it is a, it is a desire. You gotta want it, seriously want it. Because quite frankly, learning the web today, if I had to go back and learn everything that I know and had forgotten. Oh my God. I don't know. I mean, I know where I would start.

Yeah.

But like it would be a long process.

Oh yeah.

I mean I've been doing this since 2007, 2008, building on the, built on the web. So like almost 20 years now. So like it's, it's, it would. Jeez. People ask me why are you so good at this? Is because I've been doing it for 20 years.

But you had mentioned too, you asked the question and someone took the time to show you something. I think like I wanted to get your opinion on this, but I, I kind of feel like people's ability to do that or not even ability, but I, there's like a fear of being able to say or just being able to admit. I don't know. I don't know that.

Right.

Like whether it's even, whether it's like something like simply like show me how to do this or even within the job setting itself, like in a group setting, in a group meeting, in a sync or whatever the case may be.

Like a performance scare or something.

Exactly. Like almost as if like every moment of your life professionally is some sort of performance review where it's like admitting any type of inadequacy in anything is an automatic knock against you. Like there's no way to like fail in order to learn. Doesn't exist anymore. Which seems silly to me.

Yeah. Going, going back to Eric Baum, the owner of Blue Leagues. One of the things I, I used to hate I, it really like burnt me was when I would tell him we. You just can't do this in upshot. And, and he would say yes anyways and I would have to figure out how to freaking do it. And so, and so I hated that because like stop doing that. You're telling these people something that you shouldn't be able to do. But you figure out how to do it. Right now I have to. So we figure out how to do it or figure out a way to do it, some way to do it. But whatever it was. But back when HubSpot was absolutely had nothing to do with E commerce at all. He's like we can build a simple store on HubSpot, can't we? God, Eric, no, but I mean that those are things that figuring out how to do something doesn't have to be necessarily be done. Like you're saying on your own. Like asking, asking somebody for help. That's one of the reasons why I love the slack. The slap slack group that we have, the dev slack is like, especially back in the day, like we were all on it like 24 7. Seemed like trying to figure stuff out, asking questions and how did you do this? How'd you figure this out Kind of thing and somebody somewhere knew how to do it. Well now there's like, seems like 10 to 20, 30, 100,000 people on there now. It's crazy but the, there's so much more availability. But it still seems like the same people are answering questions. Right. You know, every, you know, every once in a while you see somebody new but like, like the same, same Few people seem to be answering the same questions over and over again. Well like imagine if like if like everybody just kind of took you know, an hour to their time a day and just set. Got on the, got on the, the dev slack and just started helping people out, learn, learning things, teaching people stuff, you know. And I think that's, you know, that's, that's a form of it. But there's other ways to do it too, right? Like if you're, if you. Office space. One of my, one of my favorite things to do when I work for Blue leads because we worked in the office back then was, was I would walk around to all the devs and be like, hey, is there something I need. You need help with? Is there something I can help you with? Because I was the person had been working in HubSpot the longest at that point.

Yep.

Now there's plenty of people I know way more than me. I mean, HubSpot's gone way beyond anything that I could even hope to grasp the entire thing. But back then, like, I knew a lot about the entire platform and so, you know, and so it's, it is a, it is a, it is something that I don't. Dude, I really don't know why. Like, I guess because of when I grew up. Maybe that has a lot to do with it, how I grew up. Maybe it's my, my history, like how, how I came along in my, my, my career. Maybe it has to do with like Covid. The fact that we were all kind of like shut away and we are content still technically shut away from everybody now. Like, I mean, we're working remotely and I have for a long, long time, but I, I, but it's relatively new thing like in the last five years. Yeah, working remotely. So, you know, maybe people just aren't gotten back around to it yet. But I think really we need to set up these like, these like, like meetup. Meet meetups, you know, where we used to do a lot of dev meetups and stuff. And in town now there's only a couple that I, that I really know of in my area that still do that. But like CSS tricks back in the day used to do that and so did Chris co. Chris Collier. What's that? I'm having a, a brain lapse here. What's the tool that everybody uses to do samples IO Anyways, it says tool that you go and create like a simp. Like an example, something, you know, like a code pen. Code pen. Thank you. A code pen. Like the code pen too used to have like these meetups that he would literally like pay for like coffee or whatever to have coffee at your meetup and he did like send you little giveaways and stuff and, and we'd have like 20, 30 guys there, even guys, gals, all. Everybody there and they. You just get up and show somebody what you've done. You know, that's how we, that's how we did it and learned and I think that's something that we need to go back to.

Yeah, I think, I think what I'm hearing is Developers After Dark developers meetups.

Winnebago.

Winnebago and a tour around the country. I, I, that's what I'm hearing. I, maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm.

Wrong official and get this After Dark meetup here.

You honestly, it could have been my speakers, but I think that's what I was hearing. I'm just saying that would be awesome. Yeah, I mean I, I think that's something too that we, we had, we had talked about here. Just like just me, you know, AJ and Dennis, where it was just like these are the type of things that we want to do again. Because not only that too, but then you do get to make those connections with individuals who like you have these skill sets that you know, quite frankly like just might be missing in your, like in your, in your, either your atmosphere or in your life where it's like they, it isn't just this kind of thing where it's just like, oh, I met this person. Yeah, that was cool. It was like it, it fosters these, you know, type of things. And then there's like this kind of almost two way communication that ends up being created because I know that that's kind of how it happened with at least a lot of the people that I still talk to on, on the developer Slack with regards to like themes and modules on that it all kind of came to fruition, you know, from these, whether it was inbound or whether it was like going out to you know, Boston or you know, just the continual conversations over time it really fostered some really great relationships that, you know, with, with a, a share of knowledge there that I just. You wouldn't have been able to, you could, you couldn't buy that if you tried basically.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I think that's really, really valuable.

Well, I think also like to your point Chad, when you were saying like there's no there, there's not as much communication happening or not as much people putting themselves out there. I think it's, I think it comes from like, if you think about like look at the industry as a whole, right, and look at the support for forms for developers and you see like you go to Stack overflow, you ask a very simple question, you get hounded on how you don't know something so basic, you know, or like you go to other forms and people are like.

What do you mean?

It's this function. How do you not know? Whereas like when you step into like the hustle realm, it's not like that.

No, it Is not.

It's so different. And I mean, that's what drew me to the community when I first started doing everything is that, like, I could go and be like, I don't understand Hubble. Like, I don't get what this means. And like, somebody would be like, oh, well, it's actually, you know, it's Jin Java, here's like resources, blah, blah. But you use it this way. And it's like that I needed that. I needed that example. And it wasn't like their example. They asked me what I needed and gave me my own example back. And like, I think that's just. It's so different in how the community works within HubSpot that, like, you don't have to be afraid to ask a question. No one's going to say that's dumb. Or, you know, you're an idiot. Like, we're going to say, if you don't know, let me explain it. Like, let me help you.

Yeah, man. And it is a. That's. That's exactly it. Like, that's. That's the. It's coming alongside your fellow developers and myself.

And now, along those lines of mentorship, I was going to ask you, is there. Is there a piece of advice that you've gotten over time?

It could be career.

It could not. Like I said, it doesn't even have to be within, like, the vertical of your job because even as you've mentioned previously, there are things that you do outside of that that help influence what you do, either as a career or, you know, just in general. Is there a piece of mentorship advice that's kind of stuck with you?

I would say.

The.

Probably some of the best advice that I've ever gotten or one of the best advices that I've ever gotten has been just to make sure that he. It was. It wasn't like a phrase or anything, but it was the essence was make sure that you teach other people. You know, because it's almost like. It's almost like the, like a Shaolin thing where, you know, you're the grand master. You've been doing this for so long, and you get stuck in a rut and you get stuck doing, like, your own thing day in and day out. And like, who have you actually reached, you know, who have you touched, you know, with that knowledge and that, that experience, you know, and that. That would probably be one of the biggest things for me is, is, you know, make. Make a point at least a couple times a year to try to help point somebody in the right direction. You know?

Right. Because that knowledge dies in darkness if you don't. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you have all this, like these tips, these tricks, these really great ways of doing things and you're not sharing it with people, it's sort of like it always, it always reminds me of that kind of. And actually I was just reading with regards to like SEO, I'll always scan a couple of things on LinkedIn every once in a while and there was somebody that had mentioned something about like whenever, when everybody has that phrase where it's like, I found this, this new thing that's a surefire thing to do in SEO, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's like, yeah, okay, thanks for humble brag.

It's like, okay, click this link for more and then spend $30 for my one page ebook.

Right. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not against, like if you have a course that you want someone to take, but it was like, it's almost like this like compat, like over overly competitive advantage. And I get, and I get you're not. Don't give away the secret sauce. Like I'm, I'm not advocating for that but like there are certain things where it was like, you know, it was something even as basic as. And I'm just throwing an example out there, this might not have been it, but like, you know, whether it's like redundancies of H1s, like really just simple stuff where it's like, well, I can't tell you, I'm not going to give you, you know, like, I'm not going to help you out. Why would I do that? Then you're going to be a better se. It's like, okay, maybe, but I mean like in the grand scheme of things, especially now with as fast everything moves and the amount of free resources you can get, the courses, the, you know, the Google, all, like, all of those like courses and things you can that are trying to teach you for free anyway. It seems really weird to be so guarded against. Yeah, the littlest things.

Sometimes I'm gonna double down on what Chad said about teaching somebody because I know, yes, you do get to educate a person, but that perspective can really assist in how you understand the subject matter as well. Like you will have a deep appreciation and understanding of it if you are able to teach it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And especially if you're doing it over and over again. You know, you kind of, you kind of like I used to want to, I used to want to like full, full on mentorship people, you know, where I'd be like meet with them weekly and, or every other week and we'd go over what they were doing and stuff like that. And now it's, now to me it's more about just like, like just being there, being there for them to answer questions, you know, helping them along, along their, along their path because their path is never going to look exactly like your path.

Never.

You know, you know, trying to force them into that. It's just going to make them like. I learned that with my son the first, you know, I tried to get him to come along me and he would sit right there, right there behind me and he was learning all these different websites and it, it got to the point where he just, he just didn't want to do it. And I, I realized that one day and so I literally fired him because I had hired him on to teach him. I turned around one day, I was like, you know, you don't want to be here. And I, I said, I mean this with all love and respect, but you're fired.

Wow.

And that was one of the best things I ever did because now he gives him the freedom to go do what he really go find something that he wants to do. Because nobody showed me, nobody told me, hey, you should become a web developer. I kind of developed that skill in that.

Yeah.

You know, and that's something that, that I want for him is his losses. He may seem to me sometimes like, I know one day he's going to get there, but that's kind of like this. And that's, that's kind of like where, where I go with my mentorship nowadays. Yeah.

If your son has an interview and he needs to have a reference from his last employer, would you give him a quality reference?

I've known him for 20 years.

Last boss fired me and told me to touch grass.

I must be too old because I still don't get that reference. The other thing that, the other, the other thing to answer your question, and we touched on this before, was that tools are just tools. You know, don't let them, don't let them, don't let them become your, your how or your why. You know, like if, if something is not working, don't use it, you know, or if you figure out a different way to do it. It's just there's, especially nowadays with AI and stuff like that, there's so many ways to do things nowadays, but, you know, figure out how to do it and just, just, just do it. You Know, like, I love HubSpot, but HubSpot to me is a tool. It's a, it's a, it's not, it's not necessarily a methodology. It's a way, it's a, it gives you the ability to do something really great. You know, I look at WordPress the same way and I look at Google Analytics and Core Web Vitals and all these things as just tools to help you out, help you do something great, you know, and so that's probably my other, my other piece of advice for.

People as we're, as we're getting close to time here. I did want to just kind of ask you a question or two about like, who is, who is Chad in real life, like outside of work? Like, like, especially if you're not, if you're not coding and you're not developing and you're not designing, like, what are some of the things that you do to kind of break away from? Because I mean, let's face it, what we do, like in a, I know we all do something slightly different, but like in a certain aspect it's, it's not that it's a 24, 7 and on all the time job, but it can, the lines can blur sometimes, especially if you're AJ but like, it's true. So what, what, what, what do you do to kind of like break away from that in, in like real life?

So for me that's difficult because I, I don't necessarily believe in work life balance. I believe in more, I believe in more of like a, you know, build your, build your life in a way that, that your life works well with your job. Okay. Because I think if you try to, if you try to make a balance, like try to, oh, stop at five. Like, for me, especially as a business owner, I could miss out on a lot of potential opportunities. So, you know, for me and my relationship with my wife, for instance, she understands that and I, I try to make it a point that if I'm not doing something like, vital that day or if it doesn't have to be done that day, that I'll stop. I'll stop at 5, 30, 6 o'.

Clock.

Sometimes I go a little longer if I'm in the zone or something, but, but, but I just stop what I'm doing and you know, when, when the lights come on outside, then it's time for me to go inside, you know, so, but, but I, I literally, my office is literally 20ft behind my house. So like I can just walk across the patio and I'm Home, you know, and then, you know, so I leave my, I leave my work here. Like, I know some of you guys are working out of your, out of your home. It looks like you're in your home office in your house. I was fortunate enough in 2020 to see the writing on the wall. I was like, I better build a. I better build an office. I'll be back here while it's still cheap.

That's awesome.

So.

So I built myself a little office. But the, the. I, I don't, I don't do work life balance, but what I do do is I just try to make time for other things. So like, you know, I plan vacations. I, you know, my, my. As far as my personal life, I'm involved a lot with my church and people in my church and my family, a lot with my family. My bro, My brother is recently retired from the military, so I'll be able to see him a lot more. So that's cool for me. But, but the, But I just, that's. That's it. I love to do things like bowling. I'm actually hoping to get my son on the, in the league here the next next year because he, he didn't want to do it this year just because he wanted to. He's still looking for a full time job, but. But weird.

I can't find a job.

So it's a weird, weird hours, but.

Reference from his dad.

I'm very good. Yeah, but, but he is. But, but that is, that is it. Like I, I, I'm big into, like, huge. Like, I love to bowl.

That, that brings up probably the most important question I think, in this entire podcast. So anyone who's watching, I mean, this is going to be the pivotal moment. King Kingpin or Big Lebowski? Which one's better?

Oh, Big Lebowski.

Yeah, that's the right judges say yes, that's correct. Absolutely.

You gotta like the Dude.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, but that's good, though, that, like, it's. That you're probably. I'll be honest, you're probably one of the very first ones that we've ever interviewed that actually doesn't. Not that I don't want to say doesn't believe, but, like, it's not work life balance. It's your set. The way you've described it is, is. Is a different approach to it, but yet that is just as easily obtainable and successful as someone who mentions it or, or describes it in the arena of work life balance. If that's the way that we want to Talk about it. But like, no, I, I think that's a really good thing because it's as easy as it sounds as far as like, well, you just need to fit. Like there are, there are a lot of people, you know, I'm related to one of them and I am one myself that just, it's. Sometimes it's just, it's hard to like, just to turn off.

Yeah.

There's days I work till 8, 9 o' clock at night. I mean, frankly, I mean it doesn't always happen. That's why I say work. Like balance is not really, in my opinion, it's not a real thing. Like it can't, it's hard to do like obtain. I just think that, you know, when, when your kids need you to go to a thing at school, you make time to go, you know, don't make excuses. Your. Your responsibility as a father, you need to go, you know, or whoever you are listening, just do it. You know, your work will always be there, I promise. You know, Right. There are times, there have been times when like especially before, especially when I was early on, like I was like we were on the struggle bus trying to get this thing going. So like I was working many, many hours overnight and stuff like that. Through the evening, you know, through the wee hours of the morning. You know, one or two in the morning. But like I'm, I'm 40 flipping six now. It's hard for me to work till two morning. Yeah. And didn't wake up the next morning and put my daughter on a school bus, you know, that's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, so I don't do it anymore. I just, I, I was like, you know what, it'll be a day longer than, than I what I expected it to be. But that's okay. It'll be fine. So. Yeah, so that's, that's basically it, you know. And when, when it's like 5:30 and I'm like in the zone and I look down and it's almost time for me to go to bowling on Wednesday nights I stopped and I go bowling.

Nice.

So that's, that's it, man. That's all it is. It's just, it's not, it's not really complicated. I don't want to sound philosophical or anything. It's not, I'm not trying to be. I just, you know, if you got to do something and something needs to be, get. Needs to get done. Just work's not everything, you know. You know, you can make more money tomorrow. So thank.

No, I. And listen we're running up on time here because I mean I feel like we could talk like for, for hours and this is fantastic. This is one of the reasons why we like doing this is because like, and, and especially, you know, a special thanks to you as well, Chad, because the community and everything about it is not or would not be what it is without individuals like yourself. So we, we really do appreciate, not just coming out here.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Not just talking with us, but also like what, what you've done and is there anything that you wanted to shout out or mention as far as like.

You asked me that and the only thing I could think of is I've got a cousin of mine who owns a, a school in Kenya, Africa, and it's called Canopy life and canopy life.org and they teach Africa school is not free, not like the United States. So can it be. Life teaches kids how to basically they start, start out from the youngest all the way to the like, like high school and they live on campus and they teach them how to do the. Not just learn their ABCs and 1, 2, 3s but they teach them other life skills and ultimately how to get a job. Tech technology, how to build websites, how to weld things like that. So she started that. Oh God, probably 15, 20 years ago now.

Wow.

I think it's that old now. But, but yeah, that canopy life.org if you're interested in anything like that, they even do like, if you're really interested in it, they do like on site tours and like week long or like 10 day things that you can, you can really like get your hands on it and like figure out this is something that you like doing. And I know we're in a tech, we're in a tech podcast, but like I just think it's so cool that they're, they're taking a generation of kids that maybe not have a chance and giving them life skills, even, even techno technology skills, which is like the next thing. So.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well that's very cool. I like that. That's really cool. Yeah. No, thanks again Chad for coming on. This has been really, really great. And again, obviously Dennis, AJ without you this isn't possible. So thank you both. It's good to have Dennis back. Video editing was, I had to relearn it again. So that was, that was fun. That was really fun. But no, yeah, no, thanks again. And for everyone out there, please don't forget to like and subscribe.

Subscribed.

You know, you can find us not only on the YouTube channel here at the HubSpot developers, but we also are on Spotify and on Apple podcasts, I believe, as well. I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't do the little. There you go.

Oh, my God.

Like I said, I've been practicing. I mean, why not? Yeah, why not?

We gotta put permission controls and that's it.

Good. Like a five year old. It's going to be like all nick proofed the next time I log in. But no, as the big Lebowski says, the podcast abides. So we'll see you next week, and thanks for tuning in. Awesome.

You guys have a good one.

Me too.