Dax Miller: HubSpot Apps, Capybaras, and Dope Personal Journeys
Dax Miller, a creative force behind HubSpot's thriving app ecosystem and Cheif Care Officer of Hapily, shares how embracing curiosity, goofy ideas, and relentless experimentation can turn your brand into an irresistible magnet. His journey from agency veteran to app innovator proves that authenticity and boldness are your secret weapons—especially when they come from a place of genuine gratitude.
In this episode, Dax reveals why trying "crazy" ideas isn't just fun, it's essential for standing out. You'll discover how he consistently pushes boundaries with playful projects like interviewing Capybaras and creating musical memes, all while building a successful ecosystem of apps that fill real needs. We break down his philosophy of "living the brand," how to cultivate a fearless attitude, and why transforming failure into fun turbocharges growth. Plus, he shares why embracing "selfish" creativity and shedding the fear of being goofy can unlock unprecedented opportunities for your business.
Check out this episode on YouTube and Spotify.
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Aaron Mazze (00:00)
Hello everybody, welcome to Sound of Inbound. And today we're gonna be speaking with Dax Miller. He is the Chief Care Officer with Happily. I had the pleasure of meeting Dax at this past year's Inbound Conference 2025. The HubSpot folks actually connected us. He is a fascinating individual.
Mark Killmeyer (00:13)
Yeah, Dax was so great to meet at Inbound and I'm so excited that we get to have him on as a guest for the sound of Inbound this year. He is a one of a kind person. I think he fully sets the bar for that. His energy that he brings is, I think, going to be infectious for the show and he's going to share some really cool stuff with us.
Aaron Mazze (00:28)
Yeah, in the most positive ways. Dax is an experience. You just have to experience the Dax. And he lives up to it. Dax is dope and their logo is a melted popsicle. So how could you not have some fun with that? All right. So everybody, please stay tuned for our time with Getting to Know Dax with Happily here on The Sound of Inbound.
Mark Killmeyer (00:36)
Dax is dope.
—Aaron Mazze (01:03)
Hello everybody. Today's guest not only has one of the coolest names on the planet, at least by my count, he has also taken a front row seat in HubSpot's growing app ecosystem and helped shape it from the inside out. As the co-founder of Happily, Dax Miller has turned years of agency experience into thriving product studio focused on one thing and one thing only building apps for HubSpot and not just on HubSpot, which I absolutely love. And I want to get into his creator side as we get into this podcast today.
At his core, Dax loves to create just like I do, as made evident by his recent capybara conference, which we think we're going to talk about today. ⁓ Yet he is grounded in gratitude. And you'll see that when you get introduced to Dax on today's podcast. Today, we're going to explore how that mix of curiosity, creativity, and technical depth fuels that happily story, which is a beautiful story. And what it says about the future of building inside a HubSpot or any platform for that matter and being an innovator.
Please welcome to the Sound of Inbound today, Dax Miller. I think the first thing I have to do is have everybody call out the fact that this guy is like living the brand.
Dax Miller (02:09)
Part of actually company culture, like our shit is dope is on the company culture tagline is if I had a toilet brand, my toilets would be so dope. Everybody would want my toilets. I would have the toilet. We've everybody would want it. It'd be either probably come in different colors. We have Matt. We have gloss. We'd have auto clothes. We had auto clothes psych. We'd have like it's like in Japan. I want I want background music, just, you know, privacy mode on my toilets. Right. Like and then
When I went to Japan, was like, oh my gosh, like they came out with my toilets. Like the dopest toilets, but there's just regular toilets, right? But everything that we do is brand. Every brand that we're company that we've ever built, like I'm either got jewelry, like I even have the first version, which is right here. This was the first version of our company, which was called Apchemist. So there's that one. Then there was the evolution of A Labs was there as well. And then now we got the Happily thing. And also my first company, the Hoth, got the tattoo. So like it's, we,
You can't, what are you doing it for? What are you doing it for if you're not living it?
Aaron Mazze (03:10)
Only in the last year did we start making our own like merch and I wasn't really excited about it at first. I thought maybe it's not going to turn out great. And then we updated our brand and then I got super excited about it. We actually very proud of it. And I think when people live a brand, becomes more of a lifestyle. You know, it's not just, it's not just the work. It's something that you're thinking and carrying with you all the time.
Dax Miller (03:30)
And that's the biggest thing. Like I always wanted everything that we came out with to be industry agnostic or even knowledge agnostic. Like I have no idea what this brand is, but I saw some sneakers and they were crushing it. ⁓ I saw this and I was like, wow, whatever that is, I like it. I'm about it. What do they do? They make toilets. ⁓ man. I probably should look into the toilet because if the t-shirts are go or the sneakers are wrong or they have like skate decks or something.
then again, you can live with it. makes it tangible. Like you can taste it, touch it, feel it, you know, all that.
Aaron Mazze (04:01)
Okay, so just to let everybody know, where are you calling in from today?
Dax Miller (04:05)
North of Dallas, Texas. So we're in God's country right now.
Aaron Mazze (04:11)
Yeah. You don't have the accent, so where are
Dax Miller (04:14)
I'm originally from outside of Chicago. I'm from rural Illinois. Chicago's where we migrated to eventually after college, you know what saying?
Aaron Mazze (04:22)
I was wondering, so what brought you then to Texas from the Midwest? Because that sometimes does not move. A lot of people from the Midwest seem to go either East Coast, West Coast. They don't usually go south.
Dax Miller (04:32)
Yeah, it was a journey, right? Cause snow sucks. So we left Chicago, my wife and I, when it was, it was the, the, the big freeze, basically Lake Shore Drive froze over. I opened the door, it was like to hear in snow. we're like, yeah, it's probably not where we need to be. So we were like, where's there no snow? Arizona. So we moved to Arizona, then to Tempe. My wife graduated, got her masters in ASU. And we lived there, had our kids there. We lived there for 10 years and then COVID hit and they were selling homes like hotcakes. They're like, Hey,
you have four walls, I got a bunch of money. I'll give it to you today." And we're like, okay, cool. It's kind of homogenous and boring a little bit in Arizona. Everything closes at eight. Asian food, hard to come by, needle and haystack. So we're like, well, where's the great food all the time? Las Vegas. Like, well, we'll just move there. We go there every year and we just like, we'll move there. moved to Vegas? I lived in Vegas. my God. there for two and a half years. That was a mistake.
Aaron Mazze (05:29)
community.
Dax Miller (05:30)that
time? well, we made it enjoyable with the people that we met. The stories go on and on of like how crazy that place is. But you learn like the nooks and crannies of Las Vegas and that it's like five people live there. you can if you if you are know if you do have kids and you are about business and networking, it's the perfect place for you. If you have anything younger than 20 as a child, it's not the place to be at all.
So we're like, well, we should not live here. So once we are figured out, need to, you know, someone stole my Mario sweatpants, like package thief. was, I I waited, I wanted those purple sweatpants. So bad. Somebody took them. Hallease, Jason, Suze. Long story short is, we're like, we should not live here. Where are we going to live? We looked at Texas. We don't want to go to California. We looked at Texas, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas. And we came here to north of Dallas and the Dallas suburbs. And we're like, this is really good.
So, all right, one point, it's extremely safe. It is a competition of who can have the coolest shit for kids every day, every year. It's like never ending. You can drive for four hours and it's never not like crazy populated and stuff. It's a really huge area. It's really nice. And we're just like, all right, we'll do it. Like we got to sell our house. Don't have time. Just buy another one. And we said, we buy another one and then eventually sell our house, Las Vegas house. And that's where we're here. And that's how we're in Texas. And I'll tell you what, everything that
People from the Midwest think of Texas as so far off it's hilarious.
Aaron Mazze (06:57)
This is where you found it happily, right? In when you were in Texas?
Dax Miller (07:01)
Actually, no, in reality, Happily is a constant trip, fall, stumble, Wile E. Coyote hit rake to face since 2019. But Happily, think Happily came to be, yeah, on the couch here. Yeah. Okay. yeah, we'll see. It was actually here when the true Happily and its current form was.
Aaron Mazze (07:13)
I know it's evolved over time.
Yeah, was trying to look at the timeline and all of that. So we'll get to Happily in a few minutes. I want to make sure everybody understands your personality and where you're coming from and all the things that you do. Like me, you are like the consummate creative. And when we first met, it was at the Inbound Conference. And I was actually, I'm in kind of the similar zone of trying different kind of ventures ourselves right now. And so I'm wildly intrigued by your business model and finding something that's niche bu
going after it. It's fantastic. But the moment that we after the conference and meeting each other, we get on a call with each other. The first thing you tell me is that you're launching into this Capybara conference. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And then I think it was the next day you put this thing out on LinkedIn. If you're walking around interviewing capybaras, right? You got to tell me the backstory in that one. That was hysterical.
Dax Miller (08:15)
No, man. we constantly, my family and I, constantly dating other countries. When you're not at home, you can make, it's an opportunity to make content, right? It's like, in a background, in somewhere I'm never usually, whether it's an outfit or something. And one of the highlights that I wanted to do when we were over there is like, okay, cool. Yeah, they have coffee bar, like cafes and stuff. There's actually one not too far from here, but there's like a place where you could stay. And I was like, okay, well, it's going to be ridiculously overpriced, but.
I can't do that all the time where I can wake up and have breakfast and coffee with some animals to hang out. So there's a place in, it's called the Izu, yeah, it's like the Izu Palace Hotel or Izu Resort. The Izu Resort, it's in Hakone, so it's like south of Mount Fuji, like where Mount Fuji is, like Tokyo's over here in Mount Fuji itself. And they have like a Katabara Hotel where you can stay at like a villa type thing. And the whole background, like all the friends are out hanging out.
They got their little waterfall. got the, is just chill. So you can just go outside and you're there. And then at night, like the doors are, windows are open. You can see them sleeping and coming up and pooping on your front thing so they can keep their place clean. And I was like, all right, cool. Well, what can I film while I'm here? I got to film something or do something. And then it was just like, oh, we're doing our, our mobile lead capture app is coming out. So there's a bunch of people. Where is there a bunch of people? It's a conference. I'm going to interview all these people, scan their fake badges.
Aaron Mazze (09:38)
By people he means capybaras. You kind of watch the video. very funny. And they're the most chill animals ever so you could do pretty much whatever you want with these guys.
Dax Miller (09:47)
They jump
up like dogs too, they're just like, hey man, what's the kind of carrots?
Aaron Mazze (09:51)
But like me, you are not embarrassed to try all sorts of interesting things. Just put it out there. I mean, like, right? Yeah. I think I'm curious just to kind of like our theme of these interviews and these podcasts is to kind of bring it back to helping brands make themselves so magnetic. So I'm kind of wondering from your standpoint, why is it so important for a brand to just try different things? Like, what kind of attitude should we be having?
Dax Miller (09:56)
I'm
Aaron Mazze (10:15)
it cannot be bringing success to organizations that are just out there trying stuff like don't like you just said, what's embarrassed that doesn't even mean anything is that does does that translate well into the business side of your world?
Dax Miller (10:25)
Number one, we're all vying and trying to get the currency of attention. Everything is about attention, right? If I see the same thing, no one's going to pay attention to it. If they see something different, you get the, well, what is that? That's dumb or that's cruel, but you got a that, you have attention. Regardless of that, you have attention, you have a reaction, and that's all you really want is, does someone know you exist? Because most people don't know that you exist. Granted, know, a copy bar thing is, was just a random brain fart, but.
Every time that happens, like I'm going to act on it because I have to, right? Again, we are built in the creation or in the, we're built to be like a God. We are supposed to create. It would be a tragedy and a fault to myself if that did not exist. And I think that when people have ideas for their business, they should, it's their duty and they owe it to themselves and to their organization, their group of people, collective to like make it exist in the real world. What happens afterwards, you can't control.
but you can control what you put out, right? You can show inputs, you can't control outputs, but you could put in a bunch of stuff. And I think that if you try too hard to do what the book says and follow the rules, then you're gonna have pretty much expected outcomes. And most of the time, expected outcomes are default bad. When humans interact with each other, like, depending on how your soul is, it's either, I give everyone the, we're good. Hey, what's up, I'm this. Cool, right?
default positive with human interaction. But from a brand, it's probably like default negative because it's I'm being sold. I'm on the retreat. Like I'm being like approached just like if someone if someone's like in the parking lot next time you go to Trader Joe's Whole Foods, your favorite place. If someone's in the parking lot, hey, excuse me, sir. Like there's nothing good coming out of that because you're being approached. You're being
Aaron Mazze (12:16)
I call it getting sharp. You're getting scared. It's coming from nowhere and you're getting shocked from the side. I'm agreeing though that our job overall is to find that really interesting spin on things. But where you and I are both opportunists. mean, we just there's no there's not necessarily a gate for us or any kind of like hold back for leaping into different kinds of ideas and just seeing what could happen. I was listening to another interview and somebody called it the case of the fuck it.
And it is, it's like, just don't care, you know, and I think there's a lot of people out there that put too much, let's say, conservative thinking around what marketing can do, what brands can do, and they're looking like everybody else. So our team calls it the sea of sameness. And what are you doing for yourself if you play that game? You're not standing out at all. So why would anybody want to pay attention to you when you're ready to do work?
Dax Miller (13:06)
you don't want results, you want to be safe. And that's like, that's what HR and legal want. well, I just want to be safe. Like we can do it as long as it's safe. Does it get the best results? I'm not going to get sued if I get great results. I'm going to get sued if I'm not safe. So it's like, you're, you're worried too much of what the outcome is. So you end up being lackluster inputs. And I just think that there's no, there's no room for that. You just got to throw a bunch of stuff on the wall. Like inside the push pull marketing, like if they're pushing is really easy.
Buy my thing. Here's my thing. ⁓
Aaron Mazze (13:38)
You
said something on their last call and we wrote it down because it was great should be on a t-shirt. You said selfish in my own lust to create goofy shit. You said that a last call. And so we're wondering, you know, is goofy the word is goofy the way that you're thinking about it or is it that kind of like unabashed creativeness that you're really really trying to convey by saying that you just got to get out there and try some interesting cool goofy stuff.
Dax Miller (14:04)
Yeah, satisfy your own self-interest. That's like the most basic thing that you can say, but like just do it for yourself. Most of the things that I've put out, you know, was like when, when before happily was like, labs, like I was like, all right, I have this, I had listened to this random beat that got sent to me and somebody, it's something that Connor had said. I was like, yo, I want to make this feature. And he's like, I don't think we should make that feature. And it made me think of a song.
that was called Feature Creep, because that's what everybody, when I try to make something all I would do is be like, but then we can add this, I'll add that. No one asked for this, but I want this to happen, right? And so I made a song called Feature Creep and I had like one or two random lines that I thought would be a cool, sexy R &B song. Cause I was like, cause I was making a report about it and I was like, oh, it's the X axis. Oh, it's X rated. But there's Y axis. Oh, that's Y rated. And then they'll like, oh, there's a song. Made a song, put it out. It was cool.
There's no reason for that. There's no book that's like, okay, well, step one, when you're trying to market your business, you should make a music video or something. And a lot of people do like songs and things. It's a thing now, right? But regardless if it's a thing that someone's already done, I couldn't not have it exist. It needed to exist. I couldn't get, I couldn't hold it in. I had to make this thing. I made this thing. And then I was like, cool, whew, I can go on with my life and like move on.
Aaron Mazze (15:25)
I want to make sure I get this right. Did I read right that you went to school and actually studied Spanish? Is that right?
Dax Miller (15:30)
Yeah, Spanish in business translation.
Aaron Mazze (15:32)
like Spanish language business translation or business.
Dax Miller (15:34)
I went to like art school. wanted to be like a computer programmer, whatever that meant, right? And they're like, yo, you have to go to art school for two and a half years before you can even get into computer pro web design, web design. I was like, that sounds like a big waste of time. Okay. So I did it. And then I got into the program and then like the first class was like dreamweaver. And they just give you like a piece of paper. They're like, yo, dude, here you go. Here's the assignment. I was like, am I going to teach me anything?
And there's instructions. I was like, wait a minute. Now, this is ridiculous. How much is this? And then I had been taking Spanish since I was in high school and I took it as like a minor. Like I plan on minoring it just so can learn it. But then I was just like, you know what? Everything is about to be outdated. This was like Facebook was just like a thing and the wall like turned into like, I was like, okay, you know what? You guys can't teach me anything that's not going to be new. Like I got to scrap all this. I wasted all that time. I'm just going to study Spanish because I know that at least that'll probably be around.
Aaron Mazze (16:30)
Well, I was going to say that part of that experience got you into how to trans, I'm kind of connecting the dots for you, but translating from one group into another group. And I think that's the creative side into the technology side. And I love the fact that you're in the invention world. You're kind of in that market space. So I think taking interesting and funny and maybe goofy ideas and then finding a way to spin that and translate that into ways that take it into really interesting tools.
might have been a seed that was dropped when you were in college and you were learning Spanish and trying to translate one idea into another.
Dax Miller (17:03)
Man, I'll tell you what, that dot is far, but the real dot of language is formulas. For me, it was formulas. Spanish ended up being a formula. To me, Mandarin is a formula. can pick up Mandarin, pick it up faster than anything else. Everything else is like biology. I can't do biology because it's just memory. I have no idea what this is called. But math, it's just a formula. And lot of things that you do technology-wise is just a formula. So you end up...
building formulas and then, looks like with music, like you have a formula, it may be abstract, but you have a formula you're going from the number 12, and you run that a bunch of different ways and a bunch of different devices and you've got music. But when you talk about like technology and building things, it ends up being just another formula. And what is the opposite of that is abstracting from the business formula and putting in a human involved, which ruins everything.
Like a human ruins every piece of technology. They didn't expect them to do like this on the keyboard. Like, why would you do that? I have a six episode skits of my cats with ties on and they run their own business. like that, who cares about cats with ties? I care about cats with ties because I have five cats and they got to pay rent. They're not paying rent. So they got to get, so they got to do something to help this machine move forward. And that was the idea of that. Like that's not a part of the formula, but the idea is like, what are we, what are we doing right now? I have an idea. I have a, like a, a thing happily of.
stuff my life, I'm going to smash them together and whenever there's an overlap, I can just like our, we have a thing with a rev ops at the skate shop and we have match and we're just like skateboard dudes and we just like learn HubSpot and we're just like, why can't you double click? Like, like all of them, we just go through the rev ops thing with skateboarding because guess what? I'm going to be at the skate park anyway.
Aaron Mazze (18:46)
You're talking rev-ops while you're skating?
Dax Miller (18:49)
Yeah, well it's skate shop that sells boards, but they have HopeSpot and they're trying to like figure out new stuff and they're running events. They're in knock-knock preview. They're running it like a big contest. That's an event that they have to do registrations for. And guess what I have? I have a technology that does event registrations. So it's like, why not? Like that's our whole thing. Because I want to, because I'm there anyway.
Aaron Mazze (19:11)
So was it the opportunity that you just kind of saw coming out of nowhere that was the inspiration to get into doing more app development? Was it just seeing a need and saying, my gosh, we should pursue that. This gap really needs to be filled.
Dax Miller (19:24)
simply that it's simply simply like, hey, your for your neighbor asks you to go get the mail and you have to send something and they're like, well, hop by, tell the postman that I need to send something. I'm to put it in the same box that I get the stuff. He may think you just put it there. Maybe I can like put a flag or something. Flag. That was that was it. We I had gotten a client that was a consulting client, like in 2019, that they're like, hey, I'm going to HubSpot. I was like, cool.
Like I got introduced to him. was like, what's HubSpot? A friend of a friend worked there. Hey man, tell me what this is about. I get it. Like I play video games. get how things work. get everything that's on the internet is pretty much a formula. It's a bunch of get requests and get in posts and it's the same thing. It's a bunch of, it's a facade of the same thing. That's why I say with CRMs and ERPs and ABN, they're all facades of the same thing. It's a big form in a database. But then I was like, okay, I'll figure this out. Migrate them to HubSpot. They're like, this is great.
Where do I, where do my clients look at their tickets, support tickets? I was like, it looks like they don't have like a portal of some sort. They're like, can you build it? I was like, I know someone that can. Call my friend Tyrone. Hey Tyrone, can we build this? Can you build this thing? Here's the docs. Here's how I think it would go. Whips it up. They're like, great. This is awesome. Where do I see the SLA for the tickets though now? How does one doesn't have that either. Can you build it? Yeah. Here's the docs. Here's how I want it to be. Let's call it something funny and boom, there it is.
Aaron Mazze (20:52)
Is Tyrone your Wozniak to you being Jobs in the end of world? It is? Okay.
Dax Miller (20:57)
since 2009, if I'm like, can you build this because it needs to happen? If somebody asked me for it, he's like, cool. We build it and we have it. I'm going to stumble backwards, but I'll finish the whole thing with with the HubSpot. But the long story is, the short, the short of it is every single thing that this person needed HubSpot didn't have. I was like, how is that possible? What else don't they have? You can't duplicate stuff. Come on Mike. If you can't hit clone and clone a thing.
Alright, let me just build that because that'll take this weekend as we built clone attack We called everything after video games, but it built clone attack or like over a weekend or so and put that out there And we're just there cool. Cool. We got some apps put them in there's an app store. Oh cool Throw them in the app store and then all of a sudden our phone started ringing I was like why why are you calling me? I have a deal like I'm a worker house by I have a deal Can you click over to the other line?
Okay. I'm talking to this person about something that I just built randomly, that they have a deal that a HubSpot deal that they're trying to get.
Aaron Mazze (21:58)
everything
on your app to be available when they buy.
Dax Miller (22:01)
Need
it. Yeah. They don't have HubSpot. They need this to get HubSpot. And I was like, yeah, it does this, does that. They're like, but does it do this? I was like, it can give me like an hour or two. can make it happen. Like what else? I'm like, okay, bye. I go on with my life. Well, all of sudden people started buying stuff and we're like, oh, well what else? And then we had a long roadmap, like all this stuff. There's so many apps that we didn't even build. Like I wanted to build a better teams integration, call it All-Star teams and make it look like RBI baseball for Nintendo.
And like all this stuff, right? File fantasy, like not Final Fantasy, but file fantasy that was, hey, all these ideas, right? Because it's like easy. Just what is my life? Video games. I could just name everything and brand everything video games because I like it.
Aaron Mazze (22:43)
It's a successful business model partly because lucky chance, know, it house by itself is a successful business. And there's a lot of organizations out there leveraging it for what it can do at its core, but they always, we all can't get one thing to do all the things. So you've really hitched your wagon to something that is like a rocket ship right now because of, because it's becoming more of that app universe of let's find all the gaps and try to find opportunities to help people improve upon the platform that's unique to them.
And not every single HubSpot build is the same. So why not customize it with certain apps from the marketplace, which is where you guys come in. And I think it's fantastic. I think it's an amazing opportunity for you guys that you've been able to continue to scale on that. And then just kind of full transparency, they eventually came around and invested in you guys. Is that right?
Dax Miller (23:27)
is correct. the purpose is, we always looked at this in a really interesting way, again, in the mindset where we used to be, where we build, like, let's build a bunch of utility apps, little things that do stuff and that scale. That's not a venture scale business. That's a real lifestyle business where you can just have something that pays for your rent and you're cool with it. And you can come out with little dinky things, widgets and fidget spinners and stuff like that, that people need. The biggest thing is about an ecosystem. Like if you got all of the
WordPress developers together. It's a football stadium. It's an amphitheater. It's something crazy. That the first inbound I went to, it was a table of people that were the developers on that spot. I was like, how is it only like four or five of us? I'm like, oh, because like there's no docs. There's no way to really do it. There's no videos out there that like show you how to do it. I was like, oh, well duh. Like we have to make that stuff now.
And the concept was, let's get a show pony, bring people to develop on the platform. Let's show that you could build a true business on top of HubSpot. So we would, when we broke out to be just a software company, happily, that's where HubSpot Ventures got involved and supported us similar to like how they support arrows and some of the other app companies so that they could see like there is a business to be made and bring other folks in as they.
continually work to make it a true developer platform, which is a work in progress. Definitely work in progress.
Aaron Mazze (24:59)
Okay, we're gonna pause for a minute or two and when we come back we're gonna get more in touch with Dax's personal brand and of course Happily's brand and get more of a maybe an outlook a futurist outlook of where Dax Happily and maybe the future of the industry may go so stay tuned
Okay everybody, are back with Dax and Puma. As you can see here, has joined the interview on the sound of Inbound. Hello Puma, how are you? Chillin', I can tell. ⁓ I just learned that the name Puma came from the fact that it looks like Puma's wearing a tracksuit, which I think is hysterical.
Dax Miller (25:44)
Rockin' up, I have the Puma Shrack suit, which is the inspiration.
Aaron Mazze (25:47)
Which would make you match the cat, right? Okay. I love that. We do believe in bringing in ⁓ Bringing in our animals and in sharing the workday with them. They seem to get bored really quickly I want to get out of here and want to go home
Dax Miller (26:00)
Like I was on the couch sleep in the sun like how dare you?
Aaron Mazze (26:05)
Okay, well I have a few questions for you. thought we would get into a few things about your personal brand and happily brand and then maybe a few a few more questions about where things are gonna go and some other pursuits that you have going on. So first is I'm really interested in hearing about what's one word you would use to describe your personal brand.
Dax Miller (26:24)
Grateful. Everything, man. The breath, the coffee I have right here, this cat not whooping my ass and slapping me for no reason. I have nice animals. There's too much. We live in a time where everything is within arm's reach. We have so much to be thankful for and we have so much control over what happens. I can't get enough, man. So whatever I get, can be like, hey, we're going out to dinner. What are we eating? Crackers and cheese. That's all we got. Yo.
I'll crack, I'm like, cheese man, like bring it. Can I have two? You can have two. Oh, like there's too much to be thankful for, We all don't deserve this. We could have lived in a crazy time where we make it to 15 and like that's it. And we married our cousin five times over and like now our faces are messed up. Which was not that long ago. That's like 400 years ago. Edward the second. Like, come on. was not 400. That was like 370 years ago.
Aaron Mazze (27:15)
even 400, not even 400.
Yeah, and actually we're so our agency is is very focused on the life sciences and it is remarkable how much Just the world of health care has changed even people brushing their teeth. Don't even realize how much many years that adds to their life So I'm always like fascinated by Yes, I'm agreeing with you. We are very very grateful and I tell my team all day long we push pixels around and get paid for it That's just insane So we try not to take that for granted. Okay, so moving on to happily for a moment
Other than the name itself, what's one word you would summarize that whole initiative?
Dax Miller (27:53)
that
we do is dope. It is the first company culture that you learn is don't even do the shit if it's not dope. Don't even try it. If you think adult music dope, like, so you gotta stop.
Aaron Mazze (28:03)
I have an idea. need to, unless you've already done it, because I'm pretty sure you probably have, but you should create the subdomain dope.happily.com and you should put a whole thing there about living dope.
Dax Miller (28:14)
Oh man, well that's where the store is going to be then. Or shop like, so you can get credits and like, can give people credits to like get like gear and stuff. You know what I mean? Shop.happily. I'm like, it's just like the idea of like, what's your, what's your support email? Support that. You're like, come on, you could do something like, give me that, give me a concierge, give me a chair or something. So we just did care, but like, yeah, dope is like a better sub domain than shop.
Aaron Mazze (28:17)
Okay, all right.
There you go
I would totally do that. And I would get in there for you. So a couple things. I'm curious as to AI right now and where things have been going this year and where you think it might be going next and how it could impact some of the things that you're working on. I know a lot of folks that get into vibe coding these days, because I think it's a good way to understand all the shenanigans that developers have to go through. Just try to do vibe coding to do something simple. It gives you a lot of experience and exposure to a whole other world that you may not have even known about before. But from your point of view,
Dax Miller (28:42)
It's immortalized now.
Aaron Mazze (29:10)
and just thinking about where AI has been, let's say a year ago or eight, nine months ago until now. What are your thoughts? Like, where do you think it's going?
Dax Miller (29:18)
So I think there is a bubble that's going to explode. There's all these companies that are coming out with stuff that people are like, this sounds great. Let me try to implement it. They never implement it. It doesn't do what they want. The AI company charks them as revenue. I've got another hundred thousand dollar ARR like company just signed on. It's like, homie, they're going to churn four days. Like they don't like what you have or what you have doesn't really work.
It's going to pop. So there's going to be some sort of cascading event of ⁓ AI not being implemented, like the dreams of AI, kind of like your pets.com style of cascading failures, which where people are trying to do too much. So that's not where it's going. In my opinion, there's going be some sort of cascading explosion, like where reality sets in. And then where it is really going is just the utility of just in time information.
Everything is about just in time information. Like I don't need to know how about the big, beautiful bill until I have to pay some taxes. And I want to know what it right now and how, know my situation and how does this work? Okay. can go by. Whoa, look at that. Cat hair don't care. Now, when you, when you're able to use AI for us as an assist, as a true like assistant style, like
vibe coding something to get like an MVP so they have an idea of how you can make it into a production level thing. How you can set up your own personal like finances or shopping lists or things like that where you can automatically grab stuff or be like, have, you know, what's in my fridge right now. What can I make tonight? Well, based upon you going and shopping and putting up your receipts, like you could do this, this, this and this. Great. ⁓ That type of use case, the true like,
robot that helps you but it's in the ether of information that pertains to you. think that's the biggest. Yeah, the context of you is the best use, I believe, of AI. Like you're not going to automatically have something that just calls and sets appointments and it's perfect. You know, right now, some of it like the closest you're going to get to things like that is like when you go to Walgreens and they call you and then your prescription is ready or something like that. That's like the closest and you're like, cool, thanks.
Aaron Mazze (31:26)
So on that point, ChatGBT just launched Atlas. I downloaded it, and I'm not just saying this for this show, but I downloaded it yesterday. And one of the first things I wanted to do was pull over all my history from Google. And I told it not to, because it did say, as it got started, that it's going to learn the behaviors and what my history is and who I'm looking at within the context of that whole instance, that session. Or not session, I guess that whole application.
And so I didn't realize exactly how this would work, but the very first page is just basically a chat GPT prompt to say, what do you want to learn about? What do want to look into? If you type in the name of a company, it will let you go there. But when you go there, and this is something really interesting that I'm sure HubSpot will have to consider in the future, is when you go to a website, and even if it has its own little customer service agent chat, the Atlas browser can now open a panel on the right.
and let you start asking questions in context to what you're looking at at that moment and beyond. So if I said to the chat GPT browser, should I trust this company? I'm reading this article, is the article any significance to me and should I trust them? It starts giving me information about the business, how it relates to me and if other companies could be a fit while I'm looking at this company's website. And that's not a thing, that sidecar is not really there yet until I saw this yesterday. I was like, man, this is changing.
the way I would now advise my clients to be building content. ⁓ So yeah, I was just wondering what your thoughts were on some of that too, because that's really, I think, a trend that people hadn't seen really coming yet. They thought the chat GPT windows and Gemini, they were all over here, but now they're really like interface.
Dax Miller (33:03)
Yeah, they're in your search, right? We're always searching for something, whether it be a search engine or Dewey decimal system. Like we're always like looking for something and now it's a guide. So you're like, it's like going, it's like going to like Lowe's or Home Depot. You're like, yo dude, I need to know where the metric A5 screws are. And you're in this huge warehouse and no one's got you. You feel lost. So you could go on your phone.
and look at the Bay Isle, but you have to do this whole thing. But in that same concept, if I walked in, your agent was like, yeah, I know you're looking for A5, it's over here. You're like, cool. So if I'm on the internet, I'm like, I gotta figure, I gotta get fog machine that is hypoallergenic for my fault liquid. They're like, dude, don't even go to Amazon. Like need to go here because they actually have it down the street. And you're like, cool.
Aaron Mazze (33:58)
Yeah, because I helped. Well, I was working, I won't even say the name. not, I'm afraid to drop the name. A major, major, major supermarket chain that was purchased by a major, major technology company. Could you figure out which one? And about in 2007 or eight, I went down to Atlanta and pitched them to create these wayfinding digital kiosks for the end caps in their store. So when you came in, it would give you suggestions of what you could use for dinner tonight. And then it would tell you where to find it in the store. And their immediate feedback to us was we need everybody to get lost.
Correct. want everybody to get lost. so if there's one
Dax Miller (34:31)
unnecessary shit when you're lost.
Aaron Mazze (34:33)
So if AI has got one thing, it's going to really slow down, if not maybe stop certain people's behaviors of just doing the natural exploration, which some developers have said to me, or even UX folks have said, that's going to destroy the concept of creating an experiential website. It's no longer just about exploring things. Like you have to ask it a question, and you have to know what the question is, and then it'll just answer that one question. It won't let you do this like free exploration.
Dax Miller (34:57)
Some people are gonna wanna look around anyway. Yeah, I know. just wanna look around like, can I help you find anything today? No, I'm just looking.
Aaron Mazze (35:04)
Well, Costco, you're not going to go to Costco and buy some toilet paper and then leave with a foosball table?
Dax Miller (35:10)
Right? There's the Q-means are explorers again, like we that's that was how we conquered the earth and ruined it. We just wouldn't go look in places and nooks and crannies we weren't supposed to be. So we're there. But all the optimizations, every everything that ends in the word optimization is going to be changed. Everything that's like with design, like who are you designing for? Like you used to write content for SEO so that you could get searches. Now you're writing content so that people can.
talk about it on Reddit so that she can grab it because it gets most stuff from Reddit or most of its context from Reddit. It's like those type of scenarios are now like, what are you doing? Like, what are you really trying to do? You're trying to connect with people. So you should just go right to the person. That's why we're like tripling down on events. Go right to the person, educate the person yourself, adapt them up, tell them what's good, like hug them, see what's going on with people. You can go directly to them. Otherwise you're going through this myriad of change.
and ebbs and flows of how the internet works and how people, not how it works, but how people navigate it because they used to have to navigate it. Now they don't. Now they prompt the internet. Like I don't navigate, I don't surf web pages. I ask a question. my God, I just doesn't want this. And that's okay. That's okay. Because why do I need to be sitting in front of this computer to get the information I need right now? Why? Why do I need to interact with this square? Like there's other ways to get the information, but
It ruins industries because industries are set for you to be like this, just like television advertising. They're like, we know every night TGIF, we got captive audiences. We can get all the kids stuff, all the toys from six to nine PM. They're going to be sitting in front of this thing. Maybe with a hungry man TV dinner.
Aaron Mazze (36:49)
You said HR will do the things that are safe and expected and really we got to try some different things. Otherwise, if we're not the disruptors, we're going to get disrupted. feel like strongly about that. You are pursuing some other kind of content types too and you have your own podcast as well. So was wondering in a word and a couple words or two, I mean, do you have any advice for folks that are trying to do the...
I think that's the cat, right?
Dax Miller (37:15)
He's like, yo, open the door, for me, like, really, you got to like, you got to try something different. Like, what's the motive of this episode? Like having someone on talking to them is only so much. think the format of reaction is something that's going to be bigger in that because the whole reaction video on TikTok and Instagram, people make a living watching other people's videos and just like giving their feedback, which is like being in hyperbole. And you're just like, this is so
Aaron Mazze (37:42)
I know.
Dax Miller (37:45)
This is not helping anybody.
Exactly. It's just this is Silhouettes watching the thing. It's beautiful. It's It's same thing that we were watching, right? That I think is going to be bigger. That's how we're kind of exploring new ways to interact with the guests. It's like, hey, we're going to it's the it's like the hot ones. And like I always had one I wanted to have like celebrities and like people of not celebrities, like people of interesting people and just be like, all right, we're to sit in front of this and we're going to play Nintendo. We're going to play the game today is Bubble Bobble 3. And we're like, gonna play. And they're just like, I don't, they don't know what it is. They don't know how to play, but we're like, it's bringing up, right? It's something new that's bringing up things that they haven't thought about in a while or a situation that they were in. And it's that, what is, what's spurring? What's the catalyst of the conversation? And I think that's what's missing. It's just like two people. There's no like physical catalyst. It's like, it's going that people are like, what's next? What's next? Rather than the question, they don't know. They're like watching something altogether. It's just like.
this group performance. I think that that's something that we're exploring because again, we don't want to just do, I got.
Aaron Mazze (38:55)
I think Dax, what you have to do, we have to meet up after this at some point and do a director's cut reaction video of ourselves doing this video. Yeah.
Dax Miller (39:03)
Oh, yeah. And you'd be like, what was I talking about? Why do I have a cat? Like, look how clean my shirt was. Like, I ruined.
Aaron Mazze (39:10)
Okay, all right, last question. Last question I have for today. Before we go, I ask everyone, know, I do see yourself, you see you as being very successful. And as you said, you have a lot of gratitude in all the work that you do and the life that you're leading right now. And I feel like people are always interested in how to get onto that path and kind of pursue those kinds of things, either getting into our world or being their own business owner or being an entrepreneur and trying to get into some new interesting spaces. Do you have any advice for folks that are trying to think about that leap, but they're a little scared to do it?
Dax Miller (39:39)
talk to myself right now. So it is, you have to go outside and get out there and connect with the nodes that are going to bring energy into you and bring energy to them. Like we're all, it's the atom, it's electrons, molecule, it's planets, it's the same, it's the microcosm of everything, right? And that system can't work unless you're connecting and passing energy to other people. So you have to get out and do that because then all of a sudden,
That person is going to be like, Hey, actually, I remember you, want to migrate my company to HubSpot and what's going to happen then? Like, it's going to be some crazy fall, but you can't do that sitting in the corner at your house. It's really hard to do so, right? Whether it be virtually connecting ⁓ or it's the easier one, which is go outside and ⁓ go talk to the first person you see and see what happens. Those type of putting yourself out there, having that cup empty is where that first like opportunity come because you're not going to make it.
Like you're not going to make the first opportunity. Someone's going to present you with the opportunity and you better be ready. So make sure that you've been preparing your entire life. Like everyone's been preparing their entire life for the next minute, for the next second. And I think that once you go outside and step foot, then you're kind of forced to make that change. And everyone's like, you got to make the leap. You got to your job. You got to just go. You don't. You do not. It will go like this if you want it to.
And if you, if you really want to, or you just maybe like I have a job and I have this thing that pays for my bills. So I'm leaving a comfortable lifestyle, whatever I want to do, but I'll say that. And then go be quiet for a little bit and like, see like what I want. How do I want to feel? Who don't want to do it with, because we're always so busy, make ourselves busy. Again, I'm talking to myself. Always so busy, always trying to be busy. Busy equals good, even though it probably doesn't, right? Like, are you, I'm just.
You know, just using this toothbrush, clean this floor. Like I'm busy guys, I can't talk. But being so busy to not look inward and understand like, what do I really want to do every day? What do want to wake up and do? How do I feel accomplished? Whether it be whatever, right? Asking those subsequent questions and like actually being quiet and going in. Those are the things that'll actually get you in the right, at least get you put in the right directions that you could then go forth.
Aaron Mazze (41:55)
for busy sake is not good. I do want to catch the thing I want to I want to emphasize something that you did say, if you're going to be if you're a wallflower right now, and you're ready to take not be a wallflower, make sure before you do the next thing you're ready. I think that that's the part that people don't fully understand, I'm going to leap and it's going to be great. It can be if you're ready to do it. I think that's where folks on you said it well, it's like, yeah, take those risks, but just be ready that when you get out there, people are expecting to wildly on point. So you got to really have your game down.
Dax Miller (42:24)
Yeah, you're gonna get hit. That's what luck is, is being prepared when this shit hits you in face. Exactly.
Aaron Mazze (42:30)
Okay, with that, Dax, this has been absolutely fantastic. If you want to learn all about Dax and his company, Happily, you're going to check them out. And I believe it's H-A-P-I-L-Y.com. Check out the business and it's amazing. And eventually you'll go to dope.happily.com and check out their sweet merch, which is donning right now. You can see that tasty necklace he's wearing. It's actually flavorful. Dax, again, this has been absolutely fantastic. I thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to do our reaction video very, very soon.
Dax Miller (43:00)
man, like the first of its kind. The podcast reaction. The meta shall be saved.
Aaron Mazze (43:06)
Okay, alright, thank you, Dax. We appreciate you joining us here on the Sound of Inbound.