Ep. 21 - Ride of The Valkyries with Melinda Green | Devs:After Dark

Are you coming inbound this year? Are you gonna—

I am.

Could you please ride your horse there? I want you to ride in majestically. You need some operator help.

I'm gonna have to get started now to ride her to San Francisco.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 21 of Developers After Dark. We're old enough to drink, boys.

Oh my.

For 21, this is good, this is good, good day. Um, but no, yeah, it's, um, we're on episode 21 and we have a very special guest, someone that, uh, all of us on the stage here know. Uh, I, I was just saying before we went live that I really don't have to do much in this episode because Dennis, AJ, and Melinda know each other so well. That I can just sit back and enjoy the show a little bit. This will be very nice. But before we get started, let me just jump into a couple of quick things that I wanted to pay a couple of bills with. First of all, anybody who's listening on audio, if you go to devsafterdarkpod.com, that is a website where you can find all about us, past episodes. If you want to be a guest on the show, there's also a form on that homepage that you can fill out and then we'll get in touch with you and we'll set up a date to talk just like we're doing now and just like we've done for 20 episodes previous. If you go to devsafterdarkpod.com, you can check that out. As always, if you're ever trying to figure out what's going on in the dev space here at HubSpot, you're definitely going to want to— there's a lot of videos you can watch, not just us. I don't want to be selfish, but at HubSpot Developers on YouTube, that's the channel for us and everything else development. You will find videos from— we've got Marie Hall, we've got Hannah, we've got— there's tons of people on there that you will learn so much from. Even Dennis is on there too. I mean, that's— I mean, that might be a reason not to go, but I mean, we'll see.

Yeah.

We'll see. But definitely check that out, subscribe, uh, you know, check out all the videos, click a couple likes, and learn quite a bit from all of that. I wanted to give a special shout out too to, um, I just started messing with this yesterday, but Agent AI. You're probably going to want to check this out because we've all been talking about AI, and this is basically going to be a marketplace and a professional network for AI agents and the people who love them. Basically, at the end of the day, you're going to discover, you're going to connect with, and you're going to hire AI agents to do useful things. If you go to the site, there's also like what it is all about, and it describes pretty much everything about what you're going to do there. Basically, like an AI agent uses artificial intelligence to achieve goals. It gives some, you know, basic definitions, but at the end of the day, it's going to give you quite a few tools. And I'm just on the home page right now. I'm scrolling a little bit. You've got things like video script generators. You have one of the ones that I'm very interested in checking out is web design graders. So there's quite a few things there that's going to take the AI element and kind of solve problems for you. So take a look at that and check that out. That was something that I just started messing with myself. Found it to be very, very amazing, the things that you can do. I'm actually trying to make something myself, but yeah, so go check that out. That's something you're really gonna wanna mess with a little bit. And we're a couple weeks out of the premiere of it, but always, always there's some new videos up there as well. Our friend Ricky here at HubSpot, his video is now up where he describes everything about the DevTools with regards to the Spring Spotlight. So for those of you on audio, if you go to developers.hubspot.com/ss25, You are going to check out everything that was announced in the Spring Spotlight with regards to DevTools, things from app cards to updated certifications. You name it, it's all on there and you can read all about it and you can watch some really great videos from some really great HubSpotters as well. With that being said—

Aren't you for radio? Aren't you supposed to repeat it, the address at least twice?

I mean, you can do that. I see that on infomercials a lot. I mean, we can try one trick.

Try that just once is good enough for him.

I was gonna say, there's like a— there's a steady pace I'm trying to keep here because I don't wanna keep our guests waiting.

Okay, I apologize.

You know, as opposed to someone who would rudely interrupt when someone's trying to pay the bills. But no, the very last thing I just wanted to mention was, of course, if you go to developers.hubspot.com/changelog, You're going to find everything you're going to need to know about what's going on with the developer changelog. That's not just what happens, but what's upcoming as well, because you don't want to get blindsided by anything that happens throughout. There is plenty that happens even on a daily basis. I forget what I saw. There was— who did we talk to? There was somebody who we had talked to. I think it was Nathan because I was going back and I was actually doing show notes, Dennis. You'd be proud of me. Even Nathan said in the 6 minutes that we were talking, there was probably like 5 new things that have happened in HubSpot just in that like small timeframe. So he's not wrong, it does, things happen at such a quick pace. So you're gonna wanna go and check that out. Again, for Dennis, that's developers.hubspot.com/changelog. So—

Brilliant.

With all of that out of the way, the reason why everyone is here is because of our guest today. Melinda, why don't you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

I am Melinda Green. I am a senior developer at Fahlgren Mortine in Columbus, Ohio. We are now part of the Shipyard Collective as of, I think, last July. Shipyard was another big agency in Columbus, and they sort of acquired us, but it's more of a partnership type of thing. We're both big PR full-service agencies. I am the HubSpot SME pretty much for the developer, the digital department.

Congratulations is in order too, because I just saw as I was creeping on your LinkedIn page for the last day or two, you are also a 2025 correspondent for Inbound.

Yeah, I've done that since I think maybe 20— I don't remember when they started doing that. It was sometime during COVID maybe when we were virtual, I started doing it and I know I've been in person there being a correspondent the last couple years, last few years. So yeah, it's— that's a lot of fun. It gives you a focus because inbound is like, you go to inbound, it's like drinking from the fire hose. It's like so much information coming at you at once. And being a correspondent, that really helps me to kind of focus. I'm gonna say, you know, I want to post on these particular topics. So I know what to actually listen for, um, rather than getting just completely overwhelmed by everything you could learn there possibly. You know, it's just—

That's where I get all my information. All my information comes from you all, uh, the correspondence.

Yeah, and you know, it's, it's a lot of fun. We, we drop a lot of content at that point. I know there's a lot of people who, um, temporarily unfollow me during the week of— and week You know, around inbound because it's like, okay, we get it. But, you know, there's just, there's so much to share, so much to share.

Interesting because I usually don't follow you in general, then I follow you for inbound. So it's really weird.

Well, you're, you know, that's you. That's—

I should mention too, tickets are on sale if you want to go purchase those for inbound. Just throw that out there. Question I had for you though is, is there a favorite? Now granted, I met you at the last one, so that's obviously probably your most favorite one. But aside from that, is there a favorite inbound that you've gone to that you can— and AJ's laughing, that's very nice of AJ. Is there a particular one that you've been at that really kind of stood out for you?

You know, I feel like last year did because last year there was so much— I felt like there was so much more in the— well, of course, first Nick, first Nick, of course. But there was so much more available for the developer community. We've been fighting for that for years. And I think the first Inbound I went to was 2019. And AJ, I think, was my first friend at HubSpot. We had the Developer Day on what is now Partner Day.

Yeah.

We had the Developer Day on what is now Partner Day, I think, the day before the conference. And I'm at the offices, I'm kind of meandering around going like, a bunch of developers, nobody I know, everything. And AJ just like walks up to me and goes, You look kind of lost or something like that. I'm like, yeah, well, I'm just kind of waiting. I just really don't know anybody here. And he's like, you want something? You want to help out? You want to do something? And I'm like, yes, I would love to work. I would, I would love to work and have a purpose here. So he put me to work doing something or other, like passing out name tags or something like that. And, um, yeah, so I, I consider AJ my first friend there because he rescued me when I was bored, um, and, and unknowing of what I was doing. And, uh, and okay, Dennis, like, like we met like later that day, so it's okay.

Yeah, yeah, okay, whatever, whatever.

You know, you still owe me a beer from that day. Yeah, but you know, since then we've, we've really been— I, I know, and you guys too, everybody on the HubSpot side, everybody on the developer side, you know, we've always been working to really Kind of get our cred in with inbound and really be part of it like the marketers are part of it. Because, you know, if we don't do our job, they're not going to be optimized to do their jobs. So we really are part of the backbone of what goes on. And last year, seeing more of that was just spectacular.

But wouldn't you say, Melinda, honestly, like that 2019 event, I don't know, for me, I think that might have been the best developer event we've had at HubSpot for inbound-related content. I really, I really have a special place in my heart, that one.

Yeah, that was one that the community put together, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, that was, that was, that was a lot of fun putting that together and just like, just all the ideas and the speakers and everything else. Like, that was so much fun.

I would love to be able to do that again. And I know, was it the year before last that we did one that was like a virtual in the fall?

Yeah.

And that was nice, but having everybody in the same room where the ideas really can get going and just sort of organically, that— yeah, you're right. 2019, when we used to be able to do those, those were really fantastic. I'd love to be able to do that again.

Please.

You were on the panel talk the following year for the virtual one, because I think that was the CMS panel talk that was— that I led. Where was— what was it? It was you, Who else? Mark Ryba. Aaron was on there.

Yeah.

And then, oh gosh.

What was that talk about?

It was just a CMS panel, just talking about everything related to CMS development. The big question is always like HubDB or custom objects. We touched on that and just general stuff.

Yeah, I remember Ryba. I don't remember the other 2 people who were on it.

Now I'll have to go back and look.

Yeah.

Well, Dharmesh, if you're listening, which you will at some point, I know you will. That's right. The McCormick Place here in Chicago has plenty of ample space if you ever want to run an inbound, you know, get to see me in the city of Chicago. You know, not— it might not be a bad idea. I'm just throwing it out there.

Wow. Wow. Do you do tours of Chicago while you're out there?

I could. I mean, as long as it's on the north side, that's where I used to work. I wasn't really— that's, that's— I took— yeah, so I could like, could show you a lot of nice real estate on the north side of the city. I got real estate in too, Dennis. Thank you. That's great.

Well done. Well done.

Appreciate that. See, it only takes—

what was that?

What were we on, like 12 minutes? All right. Okay, we're good. Um, uh, let's, let's transition just a little bit. Uh, Tell us, Melinda, like the origin story, essentially. Like, what is— like, what sparked your interest in technology? Or what got you kind of into the, like, going onto the path that got you to where you're at right now?

Oh, gosh. It's— I've always had kind of a love-hate relationship with it. You know, I had the little computer stuff as a kid, and I'd learn to program something, and then I'd be like, okay, now I'm done with that. I'm through with that. I'm bored with this, and walk away. And then I come back and go like, ah, I'm gonna do something else. And then I was like, no, no, no, I can't stand— I can't stand this. I want to go outside and stuff. And I'm still kind of like that. I'm gonna be the first one to run screaming away from my monitor at 5 o'clock, you know, or 6 o'clock, or whenever the work is done. I'm like, and no more. Real love-hate relationship. I love doing stuff. And I also am like, ready to be done. So it was kind of over the years, and then I, you know, just kind of dabbled in it here and there. And then in college, I got a job in the industrial engineering department, which led me to— Oh, cool. Building their first website in the early days of websites for the, for the lab that I worked for. And that led to actually nothing for a while. I went into a whole lot of other things, did a whole lot of other things, and then came back to web development probably in my early 30s. And Kind of never looked back from there. So yeah, I've been doing this now at Falgren for— I think I've been at Falgren for 15 years now.

What? Really?

Nice.

Came in as the result of an acquisition of a little thing, a little company I was working for. So, you know, Falgren itself about 12 and the other place about 3. I don't know. I don't know the math. But—

Wow.

Somebody told me the other day, congratulations, 15 years. So I know.

Isn't it crazy how like time flies and you're like, wait, what? There's an anniversary coming up? Like what?

Right. Somebody said to me the other day like, congratulations, Melanie. I'm like, what? And they're like, 15 years. And I'm like, about what? And they're like, you've been here 15 years. I'm like, really?

Is that, is that actually normal anymore? I feel like everyone moves to different companies on a yearly basis at this point.

You know, and we have some of that, you know, a lot of that turnover in agency life. But we also have some people who have been there 25, 30 years. So, we do have some longevity. It's a great company to work for. And then, we have a lot of people who will go and like leave and work for like a former client for a while. And then, they'll come back. And they're—

Hmm.

They come back with a whole new perspective having worked in the actual, let's say, B2B sector. And now coming back, they've got a completely different perspective, like on agency, how agencies work with those clients. So we have a, we have a good number of, you know, people who, who bounce and then return.

Wow.

And that's a lot of really valuable experience.

Something's going right, man. I don't know if I could ever go back to my agency. I love the people I worked with. But man, that's hard. That was destroyed me after a while.

Agency life is different. It's different. I mean, I talked to a lot of my other HubSpot developer friends and it's just sort of like, I feel like I'm on another planet entirely.

Well, I mean, that's also true, but you know, that's fine.

Thanks. Oh yeah, God, you know, I just opened myself up for that one. I walked right into that. I totally walked right into that.

Now, the agency you work for though, that you guys aren't just solely focused on HubSpot, right? Because the agency I used to work for was the same way. Like, HubSpot was a part of the business, But it was really like at the time it was Actron, which became Episerver, which became Optimizely. So we worked on those and like on Bracco and like a bunch of different systems. So like HubSpot was a small piece of it. And I don't know, to me, like it felt like it gave me more range to explore all the different things and see how I could apply those other concepts that we were using for other CMSs to HubSpot clients in a way.

So yes, exactly. So, you know, not only are we a full-service agency, we have PR, government crisis communication, communications, marketing, media relations, advertising, print design. You know, we're not even just a digital agency. We are the full spectrum, like big, big agency. And, you know, since this merger slash acquisition slash whatever last year, we have, I think we have around 400 employees now, most of them based in Columbus. And we just opened a San Diego office, the Shipyard. That's the, um, sort of the, um, corporate parent, so to speak, um, just opened a pretty big office in San Diego. So, uh, we are nationwide. Um, Fallgren has always kind of been kind of nationwide. But yeah, we're up to about 400 people now. So, and we win a lot of awards for midsize agencies and stuff like that. So, um, so not only are we just full spectrum everything, um, we are platform agnostic like you were talking about, AJ. Um, I am the HubSpot We have a few other people who work on HubSpot. We have somebody on kind of the admin side. We have somebody on the marketing automation side. We have a couple other developers who also know a little bit of HubSpot. I'm the SME as far as the developer side goes and some of the admin. And then, yeah, we, we are working in Laravel, Static, WordPress. We've got a site in Drupal. I think we've got all kinds of things. We do HTML emails. I'm also one of the specialists in flat-out HTML email, and that is a different animal altogether.

Yeah.

That's what I was specializing in before we got into the HubSpot about 6 or 7 years ago. But, you know, in any given week, I'm gonna be doing HubSpot, and then it's like, oh, sorry, you gotta build a Static site now. And then, you know, the next week it's like, well, we need you to do some WordPress, just basic maintenance. And then it's like, well, we need, we need upgrades to this, and we need migrate this. I do, um, I'm doing some of the DevOps too. So I'm the one who writes most of the content security policies and looks into how we work with, you know, nonce-ing some of the things and, and some, a little bit of the server structures and stuff like that. So it's, it's really hard to dig in. And this is where I was saying that, you know, my friends who do HubSpot, I feel like I'm on a different planet. Don't say it, Dennis. Because they're able— they really get into that depth. And it's like, as soon as I start to dig into something, somebody goes, I need you to build a Static site. And you're like, drop everything, change your entire mindset. And then when you come back, it's like, you know, as developers, when you come back, it's like, where was I? The house of cards now sort of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're starting to build it up again. And they go WordPress, and you're like, Okay. You know, so it's, it's— I have a very broad—

Yeah.

A very broad outlook and a very broad perspective over things and can see those similarities between platforms and things like that. But as for like depth, depth, depth, depth, depth that some of the, you know, other HubSpot developers get, you know, it's a challenge. It's a challenge because I, you know, having breadth and depth Is almost impossible.

I mean, like, you, you have like fundamental philosophies that are true across the spectrum, right? Like things that you go from one place to the next. I imagine your depth in that area is probably pretty amazing.

Maybe, maybe. I mean, you know, Tailwind is Tailwind, and—

Right, right, right, right, right.

Being kind of the center of a lot of CSS right now.

When you, when you're building a static HTML site, are you thinking about it as an individual unit? Or are you thinking about it in a larger, how this connects with a CRM? Or what else is this actually? What's the point? You know?

Sometimes, sometimes we do a lot of sort of basic B2B sites, a lot of what we would call brochureware, just stuff like that. Now, one thing though, that's different, again, is that our themes, when we build a theme, it's bespoke for that client. They pay a lot of money for a very tight design. You know, that is, that is very tightly branded, you know, very professionally done. So when I, like, when I used to pick up the boilerplate theme to start with, the first thing I did was rip out all the theme settings. Because we're not going to use those. And we don't want someone on the client's team to accidentally use those. And, you know, because they paid a lot of money to, you know, something really polished. And so it's bespoke, we, you know, we don't build themes for the marketplace, we build themes for one client.

Yeah, but I mean, not just— is it ground up? Or do you have some, like you said, the boilerplate, you still start from that? Or have you gone something different than that?

Um, I have the last couple I have started from that solely because they have been for a client that started with that. And we're taking that and modifying it. There are a couple clients that we've taken themes off the marketplace and done child themes off of that and kind of heavily modified them. I have not started working with the Elevate theme yet. And all of that. I'm getting, I'm getting to the point where I'm gonna start looking into that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it has, I must say about the Elevate theme, it has some really nice theme settings. Some stuff that they've done with it. Just the thing that just popped up off the top of my head when you said Elevate was the border radiuses, the way it's visually displayed now where it's like it's not just an input with a number for like the border radius. It's like, do you want rounded, slightly rounded, or not? Like it just makes the selections that much more easy. Because I mean like—

Intuitive.

Yeah, for a developer it's like, yeah, I'll put a pixel amount in there, no problem. But for like the end user who may not be as tech savvy, this, It just, there was just some things in there where I, uh, because I actually took a look at it, I was, I reviewed it like I would a normal theme. And I was just, I was just so impressed with what they did, um, that yeah, it just kind of, it really stood out to me. Um, but yeah, it's, um, the boilerplate, like, it's one of those, it's, it's a beautiful thing because it's one of those things where you can, if you're, you can use it to build for the, for the marketplace, or you can use it to kind of like It's already stripped down as it is, right? That's, you know, by definition. But like, you can also take it then too, and you can build off of it into something else. It's been one of those things where it's like, when I first got here, I was, you know, I was made aware of the boilerplate. And I was just like, okay, that's something that a developer can use if they want to. I've now at this point in my juncture here, it's been more of like a thing where I'm like, If you are a developer, just start with this, right?

Yeah.

Because it's like there's so much attention paid to that in the GitHub repository by tons and tons of developers, not just within HubSpot but outside of HubSpot. I mean, even I've put in a request or 2 in there for, you know, like to do some changes in it. But it's just like one of those things where it's like universal and it's like one of those beautiful things that its upkeep is not just like behind like the curtain. It's not the wizard behind the curtain that just HubSpot that like, you know, external developers as well contribute to it. So it's, yeah, it's just one of those beautiful things that like now it becomes like a staple when I suggest it to people.

So yeah, yeah, it is a good foundational starting point. You can kind of go any direction with it. Yeah, I like it for that.

I was gonna ask you, Melinda, Now, there's a lot of experience that you've had within like the developer community with respect to like different, like you were saying, there's, there's different, you know, content management systems. But you're also too, you're not just, it's not just tech for you. I'm told you're also classically trained. You're a singer as well. There's like, so there's more that like, as it's amazing to me, people that have such a skill set, like we talked previously, I believe it was with uh, you know, David Roma, where we, we will read things about people and it— I— you'll get tired just reading it. You're like, oh my God, like, how does— like, how can you do— tell us a little bit about some of the other things because like, to me, I find that amazing. It's like, oh yeah, I'm a developer. Oh yeah, I'm also— I'm, you know, classically trained singer. I'm also— I'm like, how— that is amazing to me. Like, how do you—

Yeah.

How do you keep it all together?

I—

it's Yeah, there are not enough hours in the day, honestly. Um, so yeah, my actual educational background is in classical voice and opera. I have a master's degree. I have sung for some of the opera companies around Columbus and sung with some symphonies around Ohio. Um, that was what I was pursuing in school. And, um, That was part of the reason I wound up getting that job in industrial engineering is I was the last in a long line of musicians that a professor hired to do some of his clerical work. Um, I got a job through a friend of mine and, um, I wound up thinking the clerical work was really boring and I started doing some software prototypes in like, um, HyperCard. I mean, yes, I'm that old. Just shut up. Shut up, Dennis. I'm that old. HyperCard. I said it. I said HyperCard. When I started in college, we were on Mac Pluses.

Yes, you were.

A little black and white screen. Those are what I had to work with. And then we got some like the, you know, the Mac II that was a box about this big and separate monitors. It was exciting. I actually learned a lot of my original programming there on a SPARC station. a Sun SPARC station.

Whoa.

They were in a room at the end of the hall. I was like, what does this do? I don't know. And I just started messing around with it. But yeah, I learned a lot on a Sun SPARC station. That's how I got— that's how I got to love command line stuff. So command line has never bothered me because I learned on a SPARC station. There was nothing fun on there. There were no pictures.

Was it like a janitor's closet? I mean, does it— you had like walk down?

It was like a— I don't know if it was like a conference room or what. It was just a room with some tables and some SPARC stations. And I'm like, I hope they weren't You know, I, I was like, I hope this doesn't mess anything up. I'm just gonna start, you know.

So, um, the main server, just—

Right, right.

So I wound up just kind of doing all kinds of things there and, um, sort of copy editing some of the grad students' research papers because I was really good in English language and stuff like that and writing. So I wound up doing all kinds of stuff, and then I, I wound up building their first website, and there were 256 colors to work with. That was an exciting day. I mean, 256 colors!

Was that, was that an entape? Was that like a tables? Because I remember when I first started and I was building websites, I was, yeah, oh yeah, tables, dragging and, or copying and pasting table cells. It wasn't obviously, it wasn't real estate, but it was like literally copying and pasting table cells of listings to try to reorder them. It was so—

It's always impossible. It's impossible. Um, yeah, yeah. And, uh, so Yeah, all that is what made me really good at doing the HTML email stuff when I was doing that, you know, a few years ago, because it's still all tables. It's, it's probably will always be all tables.

You think so?

You really think that?

I don't. I feel like email is going to be obsolete before they give up their love of tables.

Seriously, I totally agree with you.

Opinion. But, you know, that's, that's how I feel. So yeah, so I did that. That led to a job at the opera. I've gotten all my jobs in really odd ways, it seems, but I wound up working for the opera, and I worked in fundraising, I worked in outreach and education, I worked in like the artist relations, getting all the singers who were coming in, and I did their travel arrangements and stuff like that. So I did all kinds of different stuff there. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and then from there I went to the Columbus Foundation, which is a grantmaker, a big grantmaking institution. I worked there in the grantmaking department for a while and, um, doing a lot of sort of paperwork and then reviewing some, reviewing a handful of grants. And then from there I decided I was going to try to make another go of singing, and, and the market just wasn't there for it at the time, so I fell back on, um, I fell back on, um, the computer stuff. It was like, I can, I can probably get back into this somehow, right? And I got a job at a little tiny agency with, uh, that was owned by a friend of my husband at the time. And he was like, sure, sure, I need somebody, come on in. And, um, another weird way, I just kind of like said, can I have a job? And he's like, okay. Um, so I wound up there, and that's the agency that then was acquired by Falgren Mortine probably almost 15 years ago, and here I am. So yeah, it's been, it's been a real weird wild ride. Um, I still sing sometimes, um, not as much obviously. I still sing. Um, I write for a local magazine, 614 Magazine. I do like feature stories. I have, um, done concert reviews for the Columbus Dispatch back when there was like a newspaper. I mean, it's, it's still there, but it was a newspaper. A paper newspaper at the time. Um, yeah, so I've done all kinds of things. I, I also have a degree in music education, so I've done a lot of teaching. I've taught voice lessons, I've taught horseback riding lessons.

I, you know—

Have you taught lessons on a horse? Uh, music lessons while riding a horse?

Because I think— I have not done it, but I've been asked to.

Oh wow, that's amazing.

So crazy.

You mentioned, you mentioned that you, when you tried to go back into singing, uh, I think, I think I read somewhere like it, it's a pretty comp— like, it's super competitive as far as like, uh, and I, you know, being someone that doesn't have a lot of experience in it, honestly, like, it wouldn't be something that I would have thought, like, like really hyper-competitive, uh, you know, in, in that scene.

It, it is because, um, you know, the way a lot of, let's say, let's say opera works, you are hired for A performance, usually a production, and that production lasts about 3, 4 weeks. So you come in, you, you already know your music. You better already know your music when you walk in the door. You come in, you do 3 weeks of rehearsals, a week of performances, something like that, let's say. Um, and then you go on to the next job in another city, another— a different production, a different show, different language, possibly different staff. You know, you go in there and you do it all over again, but in a completely different way. completely different environment, and then you do it all over again in a completely different environment. And then if you have like a symphony gig, you go in there for one day of rehearsals and you have 2 days of performances, and then you fly out. So it is really, um, when you are a professional musician kind of on a regional or national level, you are constantly auditioning for things. Unless you're at— unless you're like the Pavarotti level, you know, you're auditioning for things. You're going in and showing them that you can do this role in this kind of environment, or, you know, a modern version of this or in a very traditional version of this and that you're going to look the part and act the part. And it is essentially constant job interviews because an audition is basically a job interview and you're, you're doing this all the time. You are always going places for interviews and always kind of hustling to get the next job. I mean, it's hard enough to get the next job when you're a developer. But when you— your job is a month long, you're gonna have to keep— I mean, it's a constant cycle of basically job interviews where you sing.

Now I have a question. Do you have to physically be there these days, or can you, you know, do it remotely?

You can. A lot of it is going remote now. And But you gotta think that, you know, the quality is not 100% there. Recording, you don't see— you know, you can do video, but, you know, video you can do different takes. How is somebody spontaneous?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it'd be crazy if it was just a bunch of people sending SoundCloud files to each other, you know what I mean?

Well, yeah, yeah. And yeah, that— I haven't done— I haven't done a whole lot, you know. I do more just sort of stay at home because I can't travel now. Yeah, I got a full-time job, so I'm kind of out of that loop. But yeah, I mean, it, it does help, but you know, there's, there's good and bad to virtual.

Plus flying's overrated too, just throwing that out there.

Of course.

I, uh, once you— question for you— once you started kind of going more towards the developer mode, right, and kind of saying this is going to be like the path, right? This is the direction. Were there things once you started that down that path that kind of surprised you at first? Were there any type of things that you ran into where you're like, oh, I wasn't really expecting this?

Um, I learned real quick that, um, what you knew 8 or 9 years ago is gone. It was like a bucket of cold water to the face. I went in and was like, yeah, I used to, I used to do all this stuff. I used to Wait, wait, you can't use blink tags anymore? You know, no more marquee? What? You know, no, right? Oh my gosh. No, it was, it was crazy. And, um, I was like, oh, I thought I knew how to do this. And, um, and I, I got back into it. I, I picked up and I learned, I relearned it. But no, I had, I had a colleague, um, Matt who at one point said, you are allowed 6 questions per day, no more. Because I was asking, I was like, how do I do that? Wait, is this where I put this? Is this what I do with it? 6 questions per day, use them wisely.

Really?

Oh yeah.

I would have never survived. I would have never made it out of the first year of HubSpot if I was—

The first, the first couple of days after he said that, I was like, you know, but Every once in a while, I find myself, you know, like drowning in something. And I'm like, I gotta ask. And then I'm like, no, no, Matt said 6 questions per day, like 14 years ago. And I'll start going and digging up the answers myself, you know, and stuff. Yeah, it's— he's traumatized me to this day. Thanks, Matt, if you ever see this. He's not somebody I work with now. So, but—

Were you the only person on that team with him?

I mean, was There were, you know, there were about 4 developers, but he just got tired of me asking questions. He was like, stop. Okay.

When I hear stuff like that, I'm kind of super grateful. Not kind of, but I am actually super grateful that like HubSpot's community exists the way it does. Because I mean, you know, go back 5, 10 years ago, even where I was at too, it was that same thing. It was still like a small I guess you would call it a skeleton crew, right? Where it was like everybody was in the same room. Like the developer was there, the SEO person, I was the SEO person, but like, you know, the copywriter was there. Like all these people were there, but like still you were basically the only tech person and there was no like real estate community. Like, you know, everybody, everything was such a guarded secret 10 years ago. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like any SEO question, any development question, it was like, I'm not giving the competitor, quote unquote, like information where it now, especially with like the HubSpot community, like there is a definite difference where it's again, and I always used to think, and I'll be honest, like that quote about, you know, the rising tide raising all ships. I was like, man, that's such a cheesy quote. But when I got here, it actually started to make sense. Do you know what I mean? Because it was like I was seeing these things in live action. So it's a shame, like. 10 years ago or so, like when we were doing stuff, I wish something like that would have been there before that.

Yeah. The community really is great and you hit on something there, Nick. I have never felt like we're not going to tell you everything we know because you might be the competitor. In this developer community, there really are no competitors. Maybe, you know, I think we're more interested in getting to the next level of what we can do. And, and to be frank, keeping up with the changelog too. You know, we're, we're, we're swimming so hard that we don't have time to fight each other on anything.

Yeah.

And that's a really good thing. And I'm not saying swimming hard in the sense of struggling. I'm saying, you know, we are going so hard toward a goal here of making this entire ecosystem better for us and so that we can deliver more for our clients that I, I've never really encountered people, you know, fighting each other over, you know, like, hahaha, you know, I know more than you and I'm not gonna share it. I never encountered that at all.

No.

Yeah, it's nice because with imposter syndrome being always a— I mean, at least for me, like a consistent thing— having people out there that are more willing to almost mentor, right, versus kind of ridicule.

Who was it?

It was BJ that said like you go into like a Reddit thing and you post the wrong answer on purpose so that way you could get the right answer with a different account. Remember it was like that? Like that's not the mentality or that's not the behavior that like you will ever, ever get in like the HubSpot community, right?

No.

In the developer community at all, which is like an amazing thing because it's I wouldn't have thought, you know, like I would hope that that wouldn't be the case, you know, anywhere else, but it is. It really is. It still exists, that kind of like, well, this is, I have this information and you don't, I'm gonna hoard this, right? Like, so yeah, it does make a huge difference. And people like yourself, Melinda, that help participate in that are, so it makes it what it is. So thank you for that.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. You know, like yesterday I was in a group chat on Slack with some other HubSpot developer colleagues of mine. And I mean, I led with, I know this is a stupid question, but— and then posed my very probably obviously fundamental question that everybody knows. And I got an answer. And I got no pushback. And I got no, hey, Melinda, that is a dumb question. I mean, it's like, I know it's a dumb question. We all know it's a dumb question. Could you just answer it for me? Because I just can't. I just can't right now. And You know, it— I got an answer with no judgment, and I, I love these people for that.

Same. I agree with that. Yeah.

Now, now, have you had it where you've given an answer and then like a change has come down and then like somebody brings it back up to you and like, it's like, oh, the past catching up again? Yeah, yeah, that happened to a lot of— like, that happened to me a lot. And a lot of the questions that I had answered before I came to HubSpot, like, a lot of things have changed since then. So then I get People that would reference like, oh, hey, you know, 5 years ago you posted this thing. Was this ever fixed? And I'm like, well, now that I'm here, yeah, it actually is fixed.

The pace of everything is so fast, so fast. And, you know, I've met, I've met the guys, at least at the time they were guys that did your documentation, the developer documentation. I think I met them at Inbound last year and I have no idea how they keep up.

Because they're amazing.

There's times that I go through there and I'm like, that, that's not how— and I'm like, I need to— and I'm like, no, they probably know it. It's just that everything's happening so much so fast that trying to keep up, uh, you know, I'm, I'm a big— you know, being a writer and stuff too, I'm a— I'm big on documentation. And I can't imagine the, the just the, the Gulf of knowledge that they have to distill into written documents.

So true.

Mind-blowing, mind-blowing. So good job.

Yeah, we'll send this to them.

Make sure they especially having to translate like my gibberish into like when I have to put a request in and it's like it makes sense in my head as I'm reading it, but then they'll come back and they'll be like, "Are you sure you don't mean to like?" And I'm like, "Wow, yeah, there's a lot of rocks jumbling around up here." I was like, "Whoa, yeah." So it's yeah, shout out to them because it's. There's a lot to keep up with and a lot to, like, decipher, essentially.

Yeah.

Let me ask you, with what you're doing currently, Melinda, are there any, are there any challenges that you're kind of facing right now that you're working through in your current role or kind of what you're working on now that you can talk about, of course?

Yeah. You know, the biggest challenge really is, is what I mentioned before is just switching gears. All the time in, in being in an agency is, you know, and I have, I have a real hard time kind of keeping up with the constant, um, pace of change with, with HubSpot. Um, it's a real challenge because, again, start to dig into something, get pulled off onto something else. And, you know, so it's, it's real hard to keep up with a lot of that stuff. I feel like I could be, I could be reading this 24/7 and it wouldn't, um—

Right.

It wouldn't matter.

Is there, is there something that— and the answer might be no, because I mean, sometimes I, I ask this question to people sometimes, and then I try to answer it myself. And there's times where I come up with like absolutely nothing.

Mm-hmm.

But are there things that you've kind of used, whether it be like newsletters, or maybe there's a particular site, or maybe even someone you follow on LinkedIn that you use as a resource Oh gosh, changelog.

I get all the developer newsletters and everything like that. You know, the monthly push that you guys put out. I watch this. I hit the Academy to try to see what's new on there. I, again, I have some friends in the ecosystem that I'm connected with on Slack and, you know, kind of see what's going on there. they're doing on a day-to-day basis because we're all sharing ideas and knowledge. LinkedIn, you know, I follow, I follow a lot of the, a lot of the developers on LinkedIn. And of course, you know, what comes to mind right now is just Nathan because his goats. Everyone wants to follow Nathan because of his goats. But, you know, a lot of that. It's, it's really kind of, yeah, there's, there's, there's more people, you know, I'm friends with Anton, and he, he drops a lot of good knowledge. And Jenny, they drop a ton of really good knowledge out there on, on LinkedIn and elsewhere. So yeah, those are kind of my main sources.

I was doing the show notes for Nathan's. And I literally, I just kept putting like, Goats, more goats as just links. There was just so much, like, it was just, it was such a pivotal part of the show notes that I had to add in a couple of, uh, goat posts there.

But yeah, no, that's really cool that he's got that as kind of his brand, you know, developer brand.

Amazing. Dennis needs to incorporate the chickens more.

Hey, I mean, yeah, trust me, in the future you're gonna have more chickens. You're gonna be seeing more chickens in the future, so don't worry about it.

You've got, you've got like the Gold's Gym for chickens. We want, I want to see that. I want to see like one with, like I said, power squatting.

I want to see—

there's, there's a lot here we can do from a marketing standpoint here. I'm not gonna be selfish. I'm just saying we could— yeah, we could do it. You know it. Yeah, I know you're smiling. I know we can do it. There's live feeds.

Dennis, are you turning red?

You look like you're turning kind of red.

You look like you're blushing.

No, no, just very happy about my chickens. Now I wanted to, because I don't want to go over time, but I wanted to ask you one more question before we get into like who Melinda is outside of tech. Is there a piece of a, because like this is, I honestly, this is one of my favorite questions and maybe it gets a little too, you know, I ask it every single time, but I just love the answers because they're so different. And that's because we talked about mentorship earlier, or I mentioned mentorship earlier, But is there like a, a piece of advice that you've been given? And it can be about work, or it could be about work-life balance. It doesn't have to be like honed in on a specific thing. But is there a piece of like mentorship advice that you've been given that's kind of stuck with you, or maybe you've even passed on, you know, to others? Gosh.

Only 6 questions.

Right, right. You're only allowed 6 questions per day. I mean, that has, that has stuck with me in kind of a mentoring type of way of You know, and, and, you know, seriously though, um, that forced me to learn to be self-reliant.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, and, and we always say, you know, it's okay to ask questions, and it is okay to ask questions, but, you know, it's also maybe, you know, you're not learning by just asking questions. Dig in, see if you can answer it yourself, and if you can't answer it yourself, ask the question with, um, this is what I've tried. I mean, thanks to Matt and, and Stack Overflow really for that one. You know, show what you've done to actually try to fix the problem yourself because that shows that you're trying to learn. You, you really—

Right.

Having a question answered helps you right now. Learning, you know, figuring out how to answer your own question is, you know, that's like, you know, give a guy a fish and, you know, teach a man to fish. Kind of thing. You know, teach yourself to solve your own problems. And that's where the actual learning is taking place. So honestly, I guess I could credit Matt and his 6 questions with, you know, you know, good piece of advice. It kind of the bigger picture of that.

Yeah, I was gonna say, because I had somebody do that to me before too, in a previous role. And it was like, you can't, you can only ask so many questions a day. And honestly, like, Like you said, it made me have to dig for answers. It made me better about researching specific technologies or like finding the right words to use to research what I needed to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was thinking on the whole self-reliant note, and you've been in tech for many, many, many, many years now.

Like, it's a lot of minutes, Dennis.

Yeah, come on, man.

A lot of monies. Are you calling me old?

Many, many, many, many.

6. Rule of 6s. Rule of 6s here.

How is the whole, like, being a woman in tech, the evolution of that and being self-reliant there? Has it— is it better now than it was then? Can you speak to any?

It's improved over the years. I've had some— there have been some Inadvertent kind of, you know, mansplaining or taking credit for somebody else's ideas kind of incidents over the years. Minor, minor. I've always, um, I feel like I've always been pretty well respected. Um, I don't, you know, me personally, I don't like to identify as like a woman developer. I am a developer.

Sure.

We are all developers here. Um, you know, the The, the physical body that we were born into is irrelevant to whether or not you can program a computer.

Mm-hmm.

So I don't necessarily identify— I've, I've gone to exactly one women in tech thing, and it was at Inbound one year when I walked past it like 7 in the morning, said to my colleague, let's see if we can get into there and see what it's like, and, and went to that. We talked our way in. And, but, you know, I didn't really learn anything there that I couldn't have learned anywhere else. So I never felt a need for that community myself. Is it great for other people? Absolutely. So, you know, I, it never really, it never really was a big thing for me.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's me. That's just my personal experience.

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome. Let's talk a little bit about who is Melinda when we're not talking about tech, because there's, um, one of the things we really like to do is just, uh, I mean, don't get me wrong, it's as equally important to know about your journey as you've gotten to where you are today within your career, within the things you've learned. I mean, those are all just as equally important. But for us too, when we're talking with people, we And especially— and I know it's going to be a little bit easier because we all know each other, or at least, I mean, AJ and Dennis know you from years back. I, of course, I didn't grace everyone with my presence until 4 years ago, so it's been— I'm, I'm, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Being part of the cool kids. I'll get there eventually, I will. But, um, tell us about some of the things that you do to kind of like unwind from everything, because like, I'll be honest, like, again, there's people Where, you know, if, if David Roma is the most interesting man in the world, you are the most interesting woman in the world. Because the things that you've done, like the amount of things that you've done just in general, is like, it's substantial. And it's like, I— it's one of those things where again, you read it and I'm like, I don't think I do shit. Like, I don't— like, honestly, like, I'm like, I gotta start like picking up a hobby or something because I really like— but what are some of the things that— What's that?

You don't do much, so I mean, you're not really—

No, I, I mean, I make, I make pictures with AI, um, and that's about it.

But that's a skill.

I mean, maybe.

I don't know. If you have the right number of fingers, you're doing well.

Sometimes it doesn't. I just tried to do that for like the thumbnails for some of the episodes, and I kept still getting 4 even though I specifically said put 5. But nevertheless, I can complain about AI later. Um, what are What are some of the things that make Melinda up as a non-techie? What do you do to unwind?

Well, gosh, we've covered the fact that I'm a musician and a writer. I am also— I have a horse and I go ride my horse to unwind. Had 3 horses at one point, 2 of them aged out. I have a horse that's about 14. She's about 14 years old now. I ride her. I have fun with her. I've actually leased her out for the summer to a teenager who wants to show her.

Oh.

So that's, that's pretty cool. Um, and she's doing real well with her, which is good. It's not a hard— not an easy horse to ride, and this teenager's doing a really fantastic job with her. So I'm really proud of that kid. Um, I have a couple dogs. I, I walk them around, um, a house and all that, you know, homeowner stuff. I am vice president of a German-American cultural society here in Columbus. I'm the 4th generation of my family at that club, and probably the— probably 3 of us have been in leadership there, so of the generations. So, um, I do that, and I am, um, I am one of the captains of their airgun shooting team. Um, shooting— target shooting is a big German, traditional German sport, and so we have an airgun shooting team, and we travel around the Midwest to other German clubs that have shooting teams, and we do indoor Olympic-style matches. And actually ours, we're having one, a regional match, next weekend. So getting ready for that.

Have you ever attempted the, um, it's the target shooting, but the ones where you have to like ski 50 miles and then shoot a target?

Biathlon? No, I have not tried that, um, because I am terrible on skis.

That looks so brutal.

I get the shooting part real well, but then the skiing, I'd be like, yeah, I just fall down and probably break limbs.

Do you, do you get a lot of your friends saying, if the apocalypse happens, we're coming to your house?

Yeah, I would just be like, yes, can we have a meeting spot that I know of? Because I will not survive in a zombie apocalypse.

And I even have one friend that I have said the same to her. So it's like, if the apocalypse happens, we're a team. Okay, we're, we're Thelma and Louise, you know, we're whatever.

Um, I mean, every Walking Dead episode has some who can ride a horse who could shoot well. I mean, it—

this is—

yeah.

There is a sport of mounted shooting, and if my horse were faster, I'd probably, um, try it. But you— it is target shooting with, um, you know, blanks at like little targets, and it's like barrel racing with things that you shoot at in between. It's right— it's fun. There's also archery where you're running down like a big half-mile-long or mile-long thing and, and loading and, you know, um, doing archery. I've never tried any of those. I, I feel like, um, That would be incredibly fun. My horse is— she's built to jump very high things, not run fast.

So, um, are you coming inbound this year? Are you?

I am.

Could you please ride your horse there? I want you to ride in majestically, seeing some operators.

I'm gonna have to get started now to ride her to San Francisco.

Get going, get going.

We need to get you on the spotlight stage basically, and then introduce you. Come on.

Oh my gosh!

Really high on stage to start off.

Right in there, like who did that? Who did that? Somebody did that one time.

Like in my head, I'm picturing like Jeversy. I can't remember what it was, but there was like an opera where they were on horseback, but they were like literally doing like Jeversy. I mean, it might have been who knows? It might have been a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I don't even remember. But like literally on horseback, like dressed as Vikings doing opera. Like that sounds like Bugs Bunny.

It's the it's the the the Flight of the Valkyries. Dun da da da da da da da. You know, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit. Valkyries were— the Valkyries were the, um, sort of half, half-human, half-god, um, women, a tribe of— a troop of women who rode down from the heavens on horseback to collect the bodies of the souls of the dead from the battlefields.

Um, okay, so this is what's happening at Inbound.

I was just gonna say, how are we not making this happen right now?

Like, where—

who do we have to talk to? I want to start slacking people out.

The Wagner Ride of the Valkyries at Inbound.

Okay.

Okay, Linda's gonna come in and then she's gonna save everybody with all their like terrible code and she's gonna make it all great.

Yeah, I mean, we've already got like people like John with the capes and everything. I mean, we're halfway there.

Yes, I'll play Elmer Fudd.

Now that— okay, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, that would be something I might get on a plane for. I might— I would consider— I would highly consider getting on a plane and going to Inbound if that were going to happen. There isn't much that I'll get me on a plane, except for maybe like a fifth of Jack Daniel's. But like anything else, I— that might be the other thing.

Jack Daniel's and the Valkyries. There we go.

I mean, I could retire after that, I'll tell you right now. That would be amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing.

No, I love that. That is a fun fact. Um, Die Walküre, The Valkyries, that is a scene from The Ring Cycle, which is a 20-hour— I believe 20-hour-long 4-day-long opera.

Yeah.

And, and if you, if you read that, it's based on Norse mythology and everything. And if you, if you are familiar with the plot of this opera and you hear Tolkien saying, um, no, I didn't base it on the Ring Cycle, you'll be like, uh-huh, sure, sure. Have you gone to one of the same stories? A lot of the same stories.

Have you gone to a performance?

I have not because it takes so much money, time and an effort to put one on that, first of all, I probably couldn't afford the tickets. Second of all, they're only gonna be at the biggest places on the coast. You're not— you might see it in Chicago, but you're not gonna see it in Ohio, probably. And if you do, it's like a once in a lifetime because, again, you know, a 3-hour opera takes— is a massive undertaking. A 20-hour—

Mm-hmm.

Plus, the orchestra is so big in operas like this you have to have people with very, very special loud voices because in opera you have no microphone. That's you on the stage. There is no microphone. Musical theater, you're allowed to have a microphone. Opera, you are not. So these people have to sing over like a 120-piece orchestra, 150-piece orchestra, a giant orchestra using just their voice. So we're talking very, very special singers that have voices, you know, one in a million voices. To put on this, and then you have to get dozens of them to do a 20-hour opera. I mean, it's, it's an undertaking that's just massive.

Is it like a package deal? Like if you buy day one, you get— because it's like, I can't imagine it's like WrestleMania where it's like you can buy Saturday's ticket or Sunday's ticket and you can miss one.

Because they are all sort of separate but interconnected stories, you usually can buy one, but mostly it's going to be package deals.

Only Nick would associate this with WrestleMania.

I know, well, it just happened. I don't know, like I'm just saying, that's what popped in my head is like, I'm multi-day event where you need tickets.

The most powerful music performance and then the most fake wrestling television.

Right.

I'm a Randy Orton fan. I can't help it. I don't know, like, I don't know what to tell you.

Like, it's—

but no, I, I, I— that has to be something because like there's, there's been times where it hasn't really been opera, but like just to be able to— anything past 2 hours, I can imagine it has to be stressful on the body and the mind. But like, especially without a microphone, I didn't realize that. That's— that to me, like I can't imagine, like, do you ever get like—

is there—

has to be some like, like tips or tricks. Like, how do you not lose your voice like every other day?

Um, that's what a lot of the training in school is about. It is, it is about— how do I say this in a nutshell— leveraging the natural resonance in your head and pharyngeal throat cavities. Your sinuses are echo chambers, basically, kind of. Your skull— there will be resonance coming from your skull. And you're leveraging that to actually amplify your voice rather than just yelling. Yelling is very hard on your vocal cords, which are technically called vocal folds, but same thing. But yelling is very hard on this. Whispering is actually very hard on your voice. But, um, just projecting, just, um, using the muscles in your throat and stuff to, um, get resonance out of your own voice is, um, will naturally amplify it.

Right.

And different skull shapes, different skull sizes, you know, the— you're going to see people have wider cheekbones often have bigger voices because they have larger sinus cavities in there that will allow resonance.

Does, uh, do you think, Melinda, do you think, uh, Nick's hair, if he had enough hairspray in it to solidify that, would be a good way to amplify his, uh—

I think it would be fantastic.

I've, I've been told my head's an echo chamber because there's nothing in here, so I mean, like, I can kind of relate slightly, I guess, a little bit.

But I mean, yeah, that, that would probably get some of the higher frequencies. Yeah, that hair. Yeah, you'd need, you'd need You need about— you need a little more product though.

Just a little more. No, no such thing as too much product. I'm just gonna throw it out there. There's no such thing. I can always, I can always improve. There's always a level I can go.

Yeah, let me ask you one more quick question because I know we are at time, but because you've been the music journalist and you've, you've seen so many, who's the one musician that, like, famous musician that you've met that you remember, like, it was like a meeting and you're like, oh God, I remember this meeting? Like, is there one?

Gosh, you know, it wasn't— it actually wasn't in, um, it actually wasn't in Music. It was an article for 614 on this one. Sorry, AJ, but you know, I'm gonna put, um— last year I interviewed R.L. Stine for an article. Yeah, I got to interview R.L. Stine. He is actually from Columbus. He grew up in Columbus. Um, he, you know, he, he called— he He tells us, you know, he was the poor kid in the rich suburb. And he is a delightful human being, funny as anything, great to talk to. But, you know, that was kind of the interview of a lifetime. The editor said, do you want to interview R.L. Stine? And I'm like, yes! I mean, who doesn't? Right.

You know?

And that was really fun doing that article.

That's so cool.

Did you have goosebumps while you were doing that?

I had all the goosebumps.

Did he, did he churn out like 7 more copies of Goosebumps while you had the interview? Because that guy's probably—

there's probably— And, you know, and then he's now like writing like, like baby horror books for his grandchildren and publishing them, you know. So he's still at it. Um, you know, a couple goosebumps here and there, but yeah, he's like, oh, I have like an early childhood horror book. And it's like, hey, you know, and he's like, oh, but it's early childhood. It's okay. It's, it's like monsters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was, that was kind of the highlight of my writing career. Um, music, most of the stuff I did was reviews. So it was concerts and stuff. Um, but I've been to some, I've been to some pretty cool concerts and gotten in free. It was, it was fun.

Yeah, I know you've influenced my musical selections and stuff for sure, because like the things that you recommend to me, I definitely go listen to. I know it's not that because I have terrible taste in music, but—

You know what though, you're the one who got me to actually listen to, um, was it Jack Johnson?

Uh, John Mayer.

John Mayer, without crying. I didn't cry. I listened to John Mayer like a big girl. Um, I don't like John Mayer, you guys. Um, never did. And, uh, AJ convinced me to listen to John Mayer, um, at least intentionally if not willingly, and I didn't hate it as much as I thought Huh.

Was that, was that because of the Grateful Dead, AJ? Because he— was that during that song?

No, it was the album that he released while he was on tour with them, uh, Long Train Home, I think was the album.

Yeah, I think that was one of the last concerts me and AJ went to was, uh, the Grateful Dead. Yeah, Alpine. Yeah, that was, that was interesting. We'll keep that for the after-hours show. But that was—

yeah, that was an amazing show.

It was a good show. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, we are running up against time. So I wanted to thank you, Melinda, for coming on because this was fantastic. It's good. I mean, we only got to meet briefly at Inbound and I was probably running around with low blood sugar trying to find food. So that was, it's usually when I'm out, that's the typical default status for me. But no, this was fantastic. It was great to get to talk to you and get to know more about you and for the viewers as well. Because I mean, you're— like I said, your, your body of work is— it's, it's one of those things, again, you read it and you're like, that one person— is this one person? Are we talking about a group of people? So it's, uh, yeah, we really—

Yeah, I filled out that page and I was like, oh, maybe that's why I don't have a lot of depth on certain things.

No, no, it— there's, there's no lack of depth at all. Like, this is, this is one of those things where it's like, it's inspiring, you know what I mean? It makes people want to get up and get off the couch. I'll be honest, because it's— yeah, so thank you so much. On a horse or I get on a heart. Yeah, there you go. Exactly.

All right, we'll start working on that Valkyrie thing for San Francisco.

I, I want that to happen so bad. I do. Is there anything you wanted to shout out, or is there any, um, people can find you, or—

Um, you can find me on, on LinkedIn, and I'll— you guys can post it.

It's, it's a, it's a made-up German word, so if I spell I'm gonna start working presently on the show notes and then go backwards. I've already, I've already, I've already shamed the people on the previous episodes because I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm only like 4 behind. So I promise, it's like, you know, once you get to about 1 in the morning, I'm like, I don't want to look at myself anymore on video. So, um, it's one of those things. But yeah, we're getting close, we're getting close. I promise it's gonna be one of those running gags at a certain point.

So yeah.

But no, but thank you so much for, for coming and we really appreciate it. And again, thanks to AJ and Dennis. Without them, this, this really doesn't happen. It's easy for me to just kind of sit here and talk and just goof around, but they put in a lot of the work behind the scenes. So that's very appreciative of that. And of course, very appreciative of Melinda for coming on and, you know, having to deal with us goofballs.

So—

I've been dealing with those goofballs for a long time.

Long time.

You're immune to it by now, I suppose.

I'm so immune to it by now.

But I will leave everybody with this one thing. He didn't come up with the quote, but he was credited for one of the ones saying it. But that was to, of course, stay hungry and stay foolish. Unless it's a Friday and you're trying to deploy something, don't be that foolish.

Ah, thank you. Thank you. Sage advice.

Yes. All right, y'all. See you later.

Bye.

Bye.

Thanks.