Ethan Maddux James: My Son’s Hundreds of Childhoods without One

People get through tough situations in many different ways. For me personally I’ve learned that writing it all down and hitting publish is what works best for me. This probably won’t be all easy to read and you don’t need to. This is more about my healing than it is about telling you all the details of what the past few days of Heather and my life have been like. The outpouring of love and support that we have already received tells me that you are interested so here we go. The following is raw, personal, extremely emotional at times, extremely rational at others and probably going to be very long. It’s also going to be your typical completely transparent Kyle rant. The start of an eventful week Monday, January 5, 2015 I got up right at 7AM and ran 5 miles on the...

Out With 2012 and In With 2013

Out With 2012 and In With 2013

It is officially a new year and as many people like to think, a time to reset goals and priorities. I don’t know if I’d describe 2012 as a difficult year, but it definitely had enough major life moments that I’ll ever be able to forget it. Moving from Boston to SC, getting married, losing my dog Skip, losing my dad, making the jump to work for myself full time… yeah I think that was enough. Let’s just leave it by saying 2012 was a year of extremes. If there is one thing I felt like I mastered in 2012 it was controlling my investments. The last 18 months have been an education in itself on learning investing and specifically the stock market, but going into 2013 I feel like I’ve made it over the education hurdle and would now consider myself a savvy...

Presidential Debate: Sausage vs. Pepperoni… YES!

Presidential Debate: Sausage vs. Pepperoni… YES!

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog so why not quickly throw out some ideas why Pizza Hut’s PR campaign of Sausage vs Pepperoni question for the presidential debate tonight is already a huge victory. You can find lots of articles on the web with the backstory. Long story short if someone asks on the presidential debate tonight, “Sausage or Pepperoni” then Pizza Hut will give that person pizza for life. Good Marketing is Controversial There is no better way to get people’s attention than through something controversial maybe even polarizing. There are a lot of people upset about that Pizza Hut would even attempt to inject itself into the debate. “It just seems like a thoughtless grab for a little bit of attention.” “Why muck up a...

Goodbye Daddy, I Love You

Goodbye Daddy, I Love You

I’ve learned that as some people work through losing someone by talking about them, others through physical tears and some bottle them up forever, my approach is to share them in writing. I originally wrote over 5,600 words in the essay about my father, and still every time I step away another story would come out that I had to write down. I used the essay rewrite to give me some quick feedback, grammatically speaking. My wife Heather pointed out that is way too much for a blog post, and it would lose most of its meaning due to the length. What I want to publicly share is my story of my father after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. This life altering event brought us closer and enabled us to grow in our relationship in ways I worry we might not have been...

The 1K Party and a Special Hammer Sighting

Wow what a wild last week at HubSpot. Long work days into the night, but that’s more of the norm now than the exception. I’m not complaining, “it simply is what it is”. Between these two events on Thursday and Friday it became obvious a blog post was in order. HubSpot 1K Customer Party That’s right HubSpot crossed the 1,000 customer plateau and that meant time to have a celebration with the customer base. I’m really not sure of the exact turnout but I was on Photographer duty and brought Rock Band for some good time at work including this “EPIC” performance by Ben Smith. Enjoy these photos from the event. MC Hammer makes an appearance on HubSpot TV So some of the guys got on Twitter and asked @MCHammer to stop by...

It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… SuperBrontoMan! #SM-wars

DJ Waldow and the guys (and girls) at Bronto are an awesome group of individuals.  I began working with them way back in 2006 (wow was it that long ago?) at Wofford and of recent times a nice little content sparing match has started up between Bronto and HubSpot.  One that I have self titled “#SM-wars“.  I don’t know if it’s war, but a social media battle back in forth in fun is a really interesting content creation strategy. The one thing I do know is that I, SuperBrontoMan, will keep a viligant eye on the situation.  It is my duty to see this content creation episode to it’s end and watch it where it might go.  Will I be a part of the creation… well DUH! (actually you could consider this telling a creation of content). The...