Co-Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah have heard from me on more than one occasion - thanking them for the strength, wisdom, and fearlessness it has taken them to grow our company to where it is today. Nothing has made me prouder to be a HubSpotter than when I took full advantage of the HubSpot sabbatical. After 5 years of working at HubSpot, I qualified for the gift and was the very first official employee to take it. A year later (to the day), I have finally gotten around to putting into words what I learned from the experience. Although I had plans of a major slideshare presentation and multiple essays...they just never happened. Now, I am happy I waited for a year to pass, because it allowed me to truly recognize and appreciate just how much the sabbatical changed things for me professionally and personally at Hubspot. “What did it REALLY change for me?” the answer is everything. I am limiting myself to writing this post's outline in no more than a half an hour (the details will take longer) but I chose to do so with the goal of getting an immediate gut reaction from myself, as I have been thinking about what to say for the past year. Time to just make it happen...(30 min Pause). I came up with 28 things.