Ep. 8 - Printers Are My Arch Nemesis with Carter McKay | Developers:After Dark
This is a YouTube video titled "Ep. 8 - Printers Are My Arch Nemesis with Carter McKay | Developers:After Dark" published in January 2025. It features a conversational podcast episode with multiple speakers including Nick LaPorte, Dennis Ant, and guest Carter McKay. The discussion covers Carter's journey into programming, his work with HubSpot development, experiences at tech conferences, and personal interests such as pickleball and custom keyboards. The tone is informal and friendly, focusing on technology, developer community engagement, and personal anecdotes.
Yeah.
Oh, we're live, by the way, so.
Oh, I know. Yeah. Oh, I know.
You're okay. Oh, we. Okay, good.
But I wanted to make sure we got a ribbon on Dennis once or twice before we got officially started, so that's. Usually, that's par for the course, but here we are. I mean, this is exciting. We're in episode eight of Developers After Dark. I'm your host, Nick. And then, of course, with me, as always, the. I would say the Robin to my Batman. Isn't that great?
I don't know how I feel about that.
Robin.
Yeah. I mean, it could be worse. Could be worse, right?
I will. I will say that I've stuck it out longer than your brother did, so, you know, that's.
That's. He's even family. He abandoned quicker than I thought. Right. So it's. But no, he's technically. Just to be fair, for people that are listening, he's not. He hasn't abandoned.
He's.
He's out right now on sabbatical. So he'. He'll be back. Maybe, if we're lucky.
I want, like, a partial refund for my down payment to get on this show because, like, I only got two of the three.
That's true. You need, like, a third discount, at least 33% back. Yeah, we apologize for that. It's. It's kind of.
But we're working on that.
Yeah, it's one of those. He may not come back after watching the episodes we've just done. Maybe he won't come back. I don't know. We'll have to see. But. But with us today, we have a really, really special guest, a good friend of the show and a good friend of us, Carter McKay. I'm going to let you introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Yeah. Carter mackay. Exactly that. I'm a big fan of HubSpot, and I just build cool things on HubSpot and try and break HubSpot and sometimes get in trouble for that. But I primarily run a small agency that helps other partners build technical things on HubSpot and explore new solutions.
Builds cool things on HubSpot, tries to break HubSpot and sometimes get in trouble. Those are all actual facts, and I can, you know, attest to every one of those.
It's not a. It's not. It's not a bad couple of bullet points to have on your belt, let's put it that way. That's a. It's very good. And we appreciate that, though it keeps. Keeps people on Their toes. So you have to look at it from a positive aspect, of course.
Yeah, exactly.
Why don't you tell us to get started? Why don't you tell us how you pretty much got into the business? Like, tell us from the very beginning what drew you into just coding technology in general?
Yeah, I mean, like, very beginning. It was. I was about age 11, so a long time ago, Long time ago. But I was really young and I was always playing around on a Mac, having fun, just like opening up settings, changing the password, getting locked out way too many times because you click the wrong button there and you're locked out and there's no coming back from that. But eventually my dad, who's also in technology, was like, hey, you should probably start doing something in the programming space as a career because you obviously enjoy this and you have a passion for it, but let's put that towards a drive and start on building skills in the area. But obviously, as a young kid, you don't necessarily just want to open up Java and C and be like, here's a textbook get started. There was actually a great course that I took and I think the company. I'm 90% sure the company went under after I completed the course because I was asking so many questions. But they were like a boot camp for building Java mods on Java Minecraft. And so you could add in your own swords and your own items, your own blocks. You could create this whole environment on Java Minecraft, vanilla Minecraft. And it was like this wonderful experience to be able to see code directly running in game. And you write one bad piece of code, the entire game does not launch or crash as. So there was very real consequences. Instead of the drag and drop programming that kids are doing these days where it's like, oh, you drag a block and the robot moves three to the right. That never felt like it had any consequences or had any direct effect. But like, programming, seeing the objects and the creations end up in real Minecraft was super cool from there. I quickly expanded past that and started doing stuff with microcontrollers and Arduino and all that fun stuff, robots. And then I realized, oh, this is a really fun passion for me. And so I started building out websites and going through web development courses and then got an internship for a company called Pivot Global, which I'm still with. I'm actually still wearing my Pivot hat. And I started growing the technology team there. I came on as an intern and built out HubSpot stuff. They were running HubSpot and I was like, what is HubSpot? Never heard of it. I'm an HTML and CSS and JavaScript dev. HubSpot was a pretty awesome platform because I was like, this is a platform. This is no longer me writing a in notepad. This is an actual tool that could be used to deploy enterprise grade websites and interfaces and experiences for your customers. So very quickly got super deep down the rabbit hole of HubSpot, building out custom themes and custom modules and all that fun stuff for big website rebrand that we were doing at the time. After finishing that rebrand, I was like, oh, this was like, this is something I could be really passionate about. And I don't, I honestly don't know how I found it. But eventually I stumbled into the HubSpot dev Slack and I think like three and a half years ago was like my very first question in the dev slack. It was some very idiot question. If I was to look back on it now.
Hey, hey, hey.
But that's, that's how we all start. That's how we all start. Yeah, there's no such thing as an inadequate question. But this was, this was a question that probably could have been worded very, very differently and made a lot more sense if I knew what I was talking about. But in my, I was very naive and I thought I knew what I was talking about. But yeah, looking back, I have no idea and I'm still very much learning. But I stumbled into the dev slack and I got an answer like immediately, pretty much. And I was like, this is magical. Like there's actual nerds and experts that are just like giving away time and answers and resources to, to help other people. It's insane.
But that's typical like that, that asking that first question though and like not feel like that's, I mean that's par for the course. I think everybody has come across that. Even when I first started working here, like even answering a question like the first, I was like, oh my God, I hope I don't sound like, you know what I mean? Like, and even to this day, even, you know, it's. You still like when you go to answer something, I'm constantly like rereading my answer before I post or even rereading a question before I ask it internally where I'm just like, oh, I hope I don't sound like a complete idiot when I post. So it's like, yeah, like a little.
Too confident in your answer and you're like, I don't think I was being cocky about that or yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Many things.
There are very few people, like Dennis that can go in there and just answer questions and just get it right. And, like, I mean, that's that.
Thank you. Now, you're totally correct on this, but no, actually, I just have the assumption that I'm a fool at all times and that I'm. I'm gonna make a fool of myself, so why not just do it publicly?
That way you could talk, that way everybody can know right away.
Yeah, here's the fool.
I've definitely had to roll back some answers and be like, okay, that was actually incorrect. And. And I'm gonna go back three days later and be like, that was totally incorrect. And I actually just ran into the same issue. And you're not crazy. I'm actually crazy for answering it that way.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're gonna have to open a support ticket on this one.
You know, the biggest thing I come across is what I said was true at one point. However, things have changed enough that it is no longer valid. You know, that that happens more often. I'd like, because things move so quickly.
Yeah. You're in an evolving industry. You can't expect that answer to always stay. Yeah, no, that. That's fair, too. And that's a good excuse, even if you do get something completely, like, definitely wrong. So it works out well.
Yeah. The amount of times I've had code break on HubSpot and be like, oh, man, HubSpot just changed that, and then realize, oh, wait, HubSpot didn't actually change that. That code just suddenly started failing and I need to go update it. But it is such a good excuse because HubSpot sometimes does that. But I use that about 50% more than I should.
Small plug for the HubSpot developer changelog. You should be subscribed and getting your notifications on it on a daily basis.
Absolutely. From an early age, instead of most kids, I would say at 11, are just playing Minecraft or just doing that. You're actually going in and reworking code and customizing your own stuff as far as that's concerned. From there, you move on. Are there things that throughout your career so far that you've done as far as events, conferences, and any type of workshops and stuff that have really stood out to you, especially within the last year or so?
Yeah, no, totally. I mean, you can't really be a HubSpot developer without going to the HubSpot conference, especially over the last two years. It really feels like the HubSpot Inbound team has made at least a little bit of an effort to bring developers into the conference a little more and create spaces for them to interact with each other and see what everyone else is building and do. Meetups and spotlights and all that fun stuff is now happening at inbound. So HubSpot inbound 24, excellent experience. There were several. There was a great developer meetup event at F1 Arcade that SJ put on. It was fantastic. I had a super fun time at that. And then there was a ton of great sessions that were specifically marketed towards developers, and I was really impressed. The room filled up. I mean, you guys did a whole session. That was excellent.
Golly. She was.
I was front row.
Check is in the mail. Check is.
You guys can find it on YouTube.
I just venmoed the money, so come on. But no, actually special shout out to SJ for that, because that was. At F1 was absolutely fantastic. That was. That was something where it was really nice to be able to get to see, you know, just get to see everyone that you're talking to from a professional standpoint, like, outside of, quote, unquote, the office, right? Like, outside of, like, you know, technical talk and outside of just HubSpot talk and just really getting to know them. That was kind of one of the things, too, that kind of sparked this kind of thing coming about, like this podcast and this kind of these discussions, right? Because it was like, you got to talk to people and you got to really get to know them like this. And it's like, we should do this on a more continual basis with everybody. And then also too, like, a big shout out to you as well, because you. You. You were there at that. That talk with me and Dennis, and you were, you know, in the audience helping it, like, so you, John and everybody else. It was, you know, huge shout out there, too, as well, because that was fantastic to have familiar faces, you know, to see when you're up there, you know, making a fool of yourself, essentially. You know, this was. You know, Dennis had to put up with that with me. But. But, yeah, but no, it's. It's a really good thing, and I'm glad that you enjoy it. And just a really kind of amazing coincidence. You say the last two years. Those are the first two years I attended Inbound, so I think that's what kind of like, elevates it and puts it just that level, like the Mohawk.
I went to Inbound the last two years expecting to see AJ At Inbound, because he told me he was going. And then I was like, this dude looks like AJ. He acts somewhat like AJ. He is not AJ. This is a fake. AJ's brought his AI to this conference and then I also.
He's not here either, just by the way.
Oddly enough, he has ditched you. That's like what, at least two times already. So, I mean, he owes you. If anyone owes you a Venmo transaction, it would be that individual right there, not me. So.
Yeah, but exactly, but no, I mean it's. It's really important to like get developers to interact with each other because like, developers are not always the most social of characters. We're not in marketing, we're not in sales. We don't have to be on that many external facing calls. And so it is like you do have to kind of make an effort to interact with the developer community, especially in the HubSpot developer community, because there is so many different spaces that you can interact and HubSpot has a lot of different community forums and boards and slacks. I think I'm in like five or six different slacks. And it's like there's so many different spaces, but if you make an effort and like there's community led events, I mean, awesome things happen. We have the hug events that are just HubSpot user group events that are absolutely excellent. You got the CRM boot camps that are great, the slacks, the community forums. There's so many different spots. But it is really awesome to be able to get face to face with people at Inbound and at the other events. You guys were just at React. The React conference. Yeah.
In New York. Yeah, yeah. Bree and John were.
Yeah, sure, yeah. Now is that one of the things you're gravitating towards currently is doing React? Or is there like a, is there a. Is there like a program language or something that's come like, let's take AI and put it off to the side because that's the answer for everybody. But like outside of that, is there something that's going on right now that's kind of like drawing you towards it more so than everything else?
No, that's a great question. I mean, the entire HubSpot ecosystem is shifting more towards React as a programming language. And it's a really smart play because there is such a market of React developers that are looking for work and that have skills that don't necessarily have the ability and the time to go learn themes and modules and Hubble and all these fun things. That's really valuable. But if, if they're only going to use it for one or two jobs, they don't necessarily Want to go and invest a lot of time and energy learning those things. So HubSpot's building out a way to tap into the existing market of React developers using React and themes and REACT on cms, which is excellent. And I actually have a group that we're trying to build out a new theme on React CMS and so I'm going to let you guys know how that's going to. And then React CRM card extensions, which are mind blowingly powerful for customizing HubSpot experiences. That's a lot of where my customers are asking for things right now is React CRM cards and building out new experiences there, creating custom calculators and quote builders and just built an AI card because someone didn't want to pay for breeze intelligence. And so like there's, there's always a new thing that can be built there and building out and customizing those experiences.
I'm curious, know how much you have to for your customers, how much they're coming to you with requests or how often you have to show them the possibilities. Like, you know, this is. By the way, you can do X.
Y and Z. Yeah, that's the special part. I'll plug the CRM components library real quick because it is really powerful. You don't have. When I first started building out CRM cards two years ago, I thought this was a huge limitation. You don't have the ability to create custom components or build out your own HTML and CSS and change what the styling looks like on your CRM cards. And two years ago I was like, oh, that's a major limitation. People are not going to like this. People are just going to open up iframes to create their own experiences. Then about six months later I was like, this is actually the most powerful feature of this because you can't mess it up. You can make it look bad, but you can't mess up the CRM and make it look terrible. But it's actually really easy to make it look good. If you understand a little bit of the HubSpot toolkit and how HubSpot experiences flow, a customer can come to you with a problem of hey, I want to build out a sidecar that can show objects and allow me to associate objects based on a couple of filters. Okay? Like that's all they can say. And in your mind you can mentally think, okay, where is that experience already in Hubside? Oh, there's already an association sidebar. Here's how they're laid out in the tile format. Maybe we add a checkbox And a button to associate them at the bottom. It'll look like HubSpot. I've built out extensions to send swag to customers before big swag store. People can pick their swag options, go in, send it, input addresses, all that fun stuff. And sales reps have hit up HubSpot support because the swag store shut down and they think it's HubSpot that's shut down.
Oh really?
And so they've hit up sales reps and sales reps and support reps are like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Swag store, HubSpot, this doesn't exist. And they're like, no, it does exist. And I've been searching through the support logs and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's really asking that support rep and that support rep, thank you for all of your help, but you had no idea what was happening and I feel so bad for you. And I fixed the swag store so you don't have to worry about it anymore. But yeah, you can build out experiences that look and feel like HubSpot for sure.
And if there is limitation, you can always put a link in that and send to your own app elsewhere to.
Do whatever pop up. Modal.
Yeah, yeah.
Going through them and reviewing them, it's been, it's been amazing to see just how like intuitive and just like the feel. Do you know what I mean? Like, because there's, I've, I've done stuff in other like custom built CRMs where like, it's just like there's a huge disconnect between like what you could be looking on one, you know, one page of it versus another, like within the same CRM. And it just like you feel like, like you're in a completely different world. Like in the, in the real estate business that, that was like constantly happened.
But you know, the real estate business does not have to make it to every.
It does. I tried to actually on purpose.
Unfortunately, I don't have the real estate experience yet.
Nor do I.
No one does.
See Dennis, There you go. There you go. This is the one. See now he, Dennis can be happy now because we finally rank him. But yeah, no, I just find like the, just the fluidness of it is, you know, it's amazing. It really is. Like, it's just, it. You can't really tell the difference. And like you said, there's, there's such a connection there and it's. Yeah, it's just, it's one of the things that I've been Probably the most excited to do. And then while. Whilst doing it have been like. It's just been amazing the amount of stuff I've learned and then just being able to experience and be a part of that is. It's pretty cool, I have to say.
Yeah, for sure.
So, but with all this, with all this.
You just mentioned you review these CRM cards while I have. You live. Like, what's the secret to getting the. To getting through the store? Okay, usually it's a.
It's a Venmo link that I have to send you. Like.
Don'T listen.
Yeah, that's true. But it's probably safe to say that you are very, very knowledgeable in quite a few things with, with respect to tech. How do you keep. Like, for me, and I think for a lot of people, one of the biggest probably hurdles in, in life is keeping up with X. Right. Whatever your niche is or whatever your vertical is or whatever your expertise is, keeping up with that, especially in an industry that's ever changing. Right. There's always a new language, there's always a new thing. How do you keep up with the world in which you operate in. Professionally.
Yeah, I mean, it's quite simple really. Just be a chronic ex addict and X and Twitter addict and I mean, you're gonna get all the information you ever need and a lot more. So that's about all you need. But no, in all seriousness, end of the show.
End of the show, we're good.
Thank you.
And that'll solve all your problems in life? No, in reality, it probably creates a lot more. But Hacker News, I love Hacker News. I love opening up Hacker News in the morning and I find like three stories and I just get so much cool information in there. I mean, you get to see people putting doom on PDFs. I don't know if you guys saw that, that you can play Doom on a PDF.
I did not see that.
On the Doom PDF trend, it's always Doom.
Didn't somebody try to do that with an app card too? Like, I think I thought I saw that like, somewhere.
It was an iframe Den it was not actually.
Yeah, it wasn't real do. Oh yeah, Unfortunately, I've thought about doing it with like emojis, but the render time is not enough. Doesn't render fast enough. But yeah, there. There's always a lot of fun stuff on, on Hacker News that gives you like general tech overview or economics overview. But yeah, X is. X is awesome. And then, and then for HubSpot stuff, you have to subscribe to the changelog on developers.HubSpot.com changelog subscribe there. And then I also have a. I have a 34 inch monitor. It's flipped vertical, and the only app that sits there is slack, primarily HubSpot dev slack. And it just sits. And I can see like, I can see like two years worth of conversations with my small font. And I mean, that's like all you need in life.
Why are you limiting yourself to 32 inches? I don't even know. You need a projector.
Yeah, exactly.
Like a whole wall. You get a whole wall. Yeah, that'd be great with all your.
Slack instances, just all of them side by side.
Yeah, but I mean, in all seriousness, you also have to play around with it. Like, if you're not building and you're not playing around with it and trying out new projects and building out client work on the new things, you're never going to learn the limitations. HubSpot's always going to say everything works first try. And like, you get in and try it and you're like, okay, this doesn't quite work how I would expect it to. Maybe it is working as intended, but that's not how I would expect it to. And I just spent three hours like going down the wrong rabbit hole to now understand, okay, that's probably not the way forward. I have to go change course, move this direction. And it's. You only get that knowledge from trying and building and asking questions and being curious. And that's, that's where I learned most of my stuff from. It's like throwing 10,000 things at the wall and seeing what sticks. I can't tell you how many Postman tabs I have open right now, because Postman literally doesn't buffer that. When I try and swipe to the left to see what tabs are open, it doesn't buffer. So I'm just chronically opening up new Postman tabs to send new requests to end points to figure out what's working and not working.
I apologize. You got to deal with Justin.
I was just gonna say, I was just gonna dig a quick call out to Justin there for the. Avoiding the question. He got his approved. He got us approved. I still haven't gotten the money yet, but he got his approved. So it's. It's fine, it's fine. But. So now another thing I wanted to ask you about that as far as, like, we always talk about and you know, an entire conversation can get filled up about like the tech heavy stuff now, there's always for Me and, and maybe it's just because like I like doing things, having podcasts and other things of that nature. There's always got to be something and I assume this for everyone, but there's always got to be something that pulls you away from all of the kind of chaos of this industry and of work in general. That's kind of as least techie as humanly possible. Right. Like I always say like every episode like you're never going to get away from it no matter what you do. In a certain respect.
Yeah. Engineers are then an engineer, whether that be like software like that you do.
Outside of work like that are or maybe even is work related sort of.
But that outside of work. We're, we're, I mean we're in middle of January right now, so right now it's not super applicable. But when it's warmer out, I, I'm playing a lot of pickleball with my family.
No joke.
You're a pickleballer?
We have a pickleball group. We have a big pickleball group and a ton of guys and we, we just do a ton of pickleball when it's actually warm out. Not like right now. I think it's supposed to be like 9 degrees tomorrow.
No excuse, no excuse last night, but you know, find an indoor court.
Yeah. And Justin just put in the chat SpaceX. I, yeah, I was most definitely watching a SpaceX launch at 4:30 last night and then I got a call from, from my parents and they were like, where are you at? And I was like, what do you mean? And they're like, you're coming for dinner, right? And I was like, huh, I'm watching a rocket launcher right now. Dinner. This is not important. And so yeah, I am absolutely obsessed with watching all types of rocket launches. Huge nerd. Huge nerd when it comes to that. I watched New Glenn this week. I was supposed to be down in Texas this week to watch the SpaceX launch. It just kept on moving back. So I didn't, I had to cancel that trip. But I'll be out there for IFT 8 the eighth flight test.
That's awesome. Did you, I was gonna ask you, did you, did you get involved in pickleball because you actually liked it or was it because it was like a trendy thing? Because it was catchy. Because first, I'll be honest, I never even heard of pickleball until I went down. I don't know if it was the last time I went down to Boston. Not the, not just I had never Area, Nothing like, what is. I've never heard of it. And all of a sudden I heard of it there and then not more than maybe like two, three weeks after that. Then all of a sudden it must have went from the east coast west because then all of a sudden it was like the talk of everybody in. Around here, at least in Illinois. So did it. Was it something that you were like, oh, this is cool, I really like this.
Or was it because I hopped on the bandwagon? I hopped on. Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I just asked because there's some people that like, will defend it to the death and be like, no, no, no, no, no. I was in the pickleball before it was. Yeah. And I'm like, okay.
I was watching those older people on the court as asking what they're doing so close to it the entire time. And then I discovered it.
Yeah. And you're like, oh, if they're playing, I could probably play. And that. They're like, they're like 10 times better than you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Playing with a 70 year old man. And I was like, okay, I can clearly take him just based on age alone. And then. Yeah, don't get a single point in age does not matter in pickleball. For some reason.
I do have a question. Now, this is a controversial question because I know there's people on both sides of this. You are an avid reader, but me personally, I'm an audiobook person. Is audiobooks reading? Because my wife, My wife will contest it's not. She'll say, no, that's not. You're not actually reading books, you're listening to them. That's not really. That doesn't technically count because I'll be like, oh, I read. Like, I can't remember the look on her face one time. I was like, I've read like three books. And she's like, when did you have time to read? I was like, audiobook, read them.
She's like, oh, okay, okay, now, now that's. That's a great question. I most definitely have like an audible three credit a month system. I'm on like the highest tier of audible because I love audible. If you're listening and working at the same time, I don't think it's. I don't think it's reading. So, like, if you're listening in the car or if you're listening, like to have like some quiet time and maybe you're taking notes, like, that could probably be considered like reading. But like, if you're listening and doing something else, I Don't think that's reading. I think that's just like consuming.
I would argue the car's not even, because, I mean, you're not fully concentrating on what's being said. Right? You have to actually. Hopefully you're not fully concentrated. Nick, are you paying attention to the road?
Well, my car doesn't auto self drive yet, but yeah, I drive a truck.
So it's a little bit driving.
Yeah, I gotta get. I gotta get a cybertruck. I can't. I gotta get that. Get rid of the old Colorado and upgrade to a self driving vehicle. Then I could do it. Yeah. But no, most of the time it's, you know, I don't do audiobooks when I drive. Sorry, Dennis, again. When I work downtown in the city for real estate, I used to. Look, I used to listen to it on the train because it was such a. It was like an hour train ride each way so that I was like, that I do it. But no, when I drive, it's usually podcasts or something like that that I'll listen to.
It's not really no audiobooks. I also listen to a ton of podcasts. What usually happens is I'm getting like really deep into a good book and then I have to go work and I actually have to do something like, productive and I'm like, well, I want to keep on. Like, I don't want to lose this, this book and, and I want to keep it, keep it going. So I then purchased the audiobook and I listened to like a quarter of the audiobook and then I listened and then I read the rest of the book. But now I have a full audiobook that's only been like a quarter of it's been listened to. And, but, but I've, I consumed that book in about a day, so that's, that's usually how it happens.
Excellent. Excellent. I'm looking at Justin in the, in the chat and he said his wife does the same thing and has the same. I mean, we're right, obviously, but I'm not, you know, it's. Yeah, I'm not dying on that hill. I'm not dying on that hill.
You should, though, when you enter your library contest. Are you, are you counting it?
Could you, could you safely write a, you know, a book report?
I mean, chat, gtp.
Could.
I mean, define safely. I mean, what is, what do you mean by plagiarism?
Oh my God.
Helping out. It's not plagiarism.
I worry about your.
I'll change a word or two. It's not plagiarism.
It's all good then.
I've been trying to tell my professors that for a long time.
Excellent. Now, you mentioned something too, about also as kind of like a side hobby too, about building custom keyboards. I was going to ask you, do you partake as part of the PC master race? Do you also partake in building computers out as well? Or is it just. Did you just kind of stick with keyboard?
Yeah, so I have a custom built computer. I love Mac though. And so like, I'm just on Mac right now, but like I game interior, but on my PC that I custom built.
Your hackintosh.
I used to have a hackintosh, but now it's just running Windows. Windows 11. Because Windows 10 is losing support for all Windows apps on like, October. Windows 10 is losing support for everything. So I don't know why they're doing that, but they're. They're destroying the world and, and replacing it with Windows 11, which is still jank in my opinion. But yes, I primarily build keyboards. And thank you for bringing that up to solidify my nerdiness with the world badge.
Wear that like a badge, like I said.
Yeah. I put it in the questionnaire, Nick. Like, I was willing to share it, but you brought it up in such a way that I felt like now, now, now I'm. Now I am certified.
It's true. It's true. It's something I appreciate. Honestly. I, like, I, you know, I can't remember if I mentioned it with you, Dennis and AJ maybe once, but, like, that's how I like, my first. My first, like, dive into, like, just building computers in general was breaking like my family's first computer that my dad spent a ton of money on. Because that, you know, back in the time, it was like, you know, luxury. And it was just like I'm pulling it apart and spray painting it. And I thought he was gonna die. I'm like, he's just looking at me like, what are you. I'm like, no, this is gonna be cool. Trust me.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like custom, you know, like doing custom paint jobs on and stuff, like. Yeah, but I mean, I broke, you know, a good dozen of them, you know, between then and now. But, like, it's one of those things where, like, I don't know, there's. There's a rewarding aspect of it, and it could be just. It doesn't have to be a whole computer, like keyboards, just. But like doing that and building something like that that then functions after the fact, you know, if you do It. Right. There's something, like, super rewarding about that. So I don't know that's me personally, but that's why I brought it up, because, you know, you have that same type of mentality, and I like that, honestly.
Yeah, No, I got into it because, like, I was. I was kind of done with the old keyboard layout, and I wanted something new, so I built out these split keyboards, and they were ortholinear. So instead. Instead of being in rows, the fingers are now in columns, and, I mean, your fingers are in columns, so it's so much better for you. And now I just alternate between my split keyboards and regular keyboard, and I've actually been able to, like, mentally map it somehow that I can keep, like, the same words per minute, like, and I can transfer, like, all of it within 10 seconds. It's very strange. But now I'm able to do that. My brain is, like, remapped itself.
Excellent.
I believe Hannah has. I think she's in the chat right now. Doesn't she have, like, a custom keyboard.
Talking about switches right now?
Yeah, yeah.
She's talking about display. Keyboards are so comfy.
What was it? Lord of the Rings, was it?
No. Lord of the Rings. Yeah, yeah.
Please tell us now. Right, yeah.
Because I. I thought it was Zelda, but that was something else. That was. No, that was Breeze. Breeze talk was about Zelda. Yeah. I think yours is Lord of the. Hannah's was Lord of the Rings. The keyboard. Yeah. Yeah.
Which I don't understand because I can barely type anyway. And I still reference letters on keys if I. If necessary, and on again, I think.
Hannah. Hannah, you bought this one from Drop, right?
She might have.
Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna mess. Hannah bought that one from Drop. I saw that one.
To the listeners who are not watching this and seeing the live feed, just heads up. There might be pauses because we're interacting with the chat presently. Yeah.
Okay.
I'm going to have to message Hannah about that separately, and so we don't completely derail the conversation with another four.
Minutes of keyboard talk. That's fine. I want to ask you a little bit about actually this. Doing this a little bit out of order, but when you first started your career, what is one of the things that kind of surprised you the most? I mean, obviously, answers vary from, like, vertical to vertical and depending on, you know, when you actually. And for. It depends, like, what you want. Like, because, again, like, you can start working. Like, I started working at 16. That wasn't when I first started my career. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a, there's a certain job you might attain where you say, okay, this is it. This is, this is where my thing starts. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like the first job you ever had, but like, at the point where you thought, okay, this is what I could do for the rest of my life. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, what surprised you the most at that point?
Yeah, I mean, I would have to say I am like incredibly lucky that the thing I like was passionate about. I'm still passionate about and I still wanted.
I mean, this obviously answers vary from like vertical to vertical and you know, depending on, you know, when you actually and for. It depends like what you want. Like, because again, like, you can start working. Like I started working at 16. That wasn't when I first started my career. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a, there's a certain job you might attain where you say, okay, this is it. This is, this is where my thing starts. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like the first job you ever had, but like, at the point where you.
Thought, do for the next good while, granted, I'm still very young, so maybe that'll change in the next couple of years, but for the time being, it's excellent. To answer your question, the thing I was surprised about is, and coming from being like self taught, there's obviously a little bit of, am I actually smart enough to handle this situation or to solve this problem? What's the correct, what's the correct name for that?
This is what I could do for the rest of my life. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, what surprised you the most at that point?
Yeah, I mean, I would have to say I am like incredibly lucky that the thing I like was passionate about. I'm still passionate about and I still want to do for the next good while granted, I'm still very young, so maybe that'll change in the next couple of years. But for the time being, it's excellent to answer. Nick.
Imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome. That's the word I was looking for. Exactly.
I live it every day.
Yeah, imposter syndrome. And it wasn't until I realized that, oh, everyone actually has imposter syndrome and everyone's thinking that same thing. I was like, okay, that means we're all at the same question. The thing I was surprised about is, and coming from being self taught, there's obviously a little bit of, am I actually smart enough to handle this situation or to solve this problem? What's the Correct name for that, Nick.
Imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome. That's the word I was looking for. Exactly.
I live it every day. That's.
Yeah, everyone has imposter syndrome. And it wasn't until I realized that, oh, everyone same level or using Google or we all forget how to do a for loop in JavaScript sometimes because it needs three little sections and yeah, so I definitely had that for a little bit and, and I mean obviously still do to, to some degree. But it wasn't until I realized, oh, actually everyone in this room has imposter syndrome at some level and they don't understand how to do some level of this project or they're going to need to seek external advice on this project. That was kind of mind blowing, especially coming from self taught and thinking, oh, I don't necessarily have the education for this. And I was like, oh wait, no one actually has imposter syndrome and everyone's thinking that same thing. I was like, okay, that means we're all at the same level or we're all using Google or we all forget how to do a for loop in JavaScript sometimes as the education for this, we're solving this live and for the first time this is a very unique solution.
If you don't think the person next to you has been to stack overflow once, you're kidding yourself. You're absolutely kidding yourself. We've all been there. So it's like also, isn't it amazing.
How much better solutions you can get if you have a community of people actually working together and admitting that I don't know the answer. Maybe we could work on it together. Oh yeah, isn't that beautiful?
That's the HubSpot dev Slack. That's why I love it. Like you get an absolute genius that's been doing it for 15 years and they're asking what could be a basic question for someone that's just starting this but it's a new thing and they're like, hey, I don't remember how this new thing works. Here's how I did it. The old way, does that convert to the new way? And you can answer that or you see someone even new answering that and it's like a really cool thing. It's just like knowledge sharing between levels. There's like no levels in the dev slack unless you add levels to your name.
And for that new person, honestly that's probably one of the most powerful things because that makes you like, that builds your confidence right there. Then says I have worth, you know, like I'M valuable to this community, which is huge.
Yeah.
Especially if you come from like, especially if you're in the developer Slack and you're in a business or you're working for a place that is almost like kind of skeleton crewish, right. Where you don't have a lot of internal resources. Right. Like, because depending on the size of the company you work for, you may only have like one other tech person that works with you or maybe like a CTO or something like that where it's like you don't have that constant communication or that soundboard where you can have a confident, not even a confident discussion, but just have a discussion that kind of like where you can kind of just spitball these concerns and ideas and you kind of feel, you almost feel like you're on an island by yourself. And that's just a very scary. Do you know what I mean? Especially when like, because we've all been there where you've been in a position where it's like, well, we're going to expect this of this person. And it's like, okay, well that's a little bit more than I'm supposed to do. But I have no resources as far as like, I can't lean over to the person next to me and say, hey, what do you think about this? Like, hey, second pair of eyeballs on this code. Like the developer Slack and that community itself is just like one of those powerful things that. Yeah, again, like not to reference where I came from to here, but like it, it made it, it made a huge difference. It made a huge impact because I constantly felt like that, like I was on an island, I worked at a place with one other person who was a good friend, but still like, it was like I couldn't constantly be. They had their own thing to do, right. And it wasn't necessarily in my realm, so I was by myself. Right. It was almost like, you know, they're like, hey, you know SEO? No. Well, you're gonna know it now or you're better. You know what I mean? Like you have those scenarios, you know, insert SEO with something else. But yeah, for it to have a community where you can like and not just having it there, but the reception when you arrive, right. The dentist, the Johns, the AJ's and then the other people that like Carter, who give their time without any, without asking anything in return and just answering questions. Once you see that, that, that just changes your whole. You know, you can get pretty cynical pretty quickly, right? When you're by yourself and you feel like you're just, it's. The pressure is piling on you when you see that. It's like a weightlifted, really. And it's, you know. You know, I could keep praising it all day long, but it's just that important, honestly.
So it's so much more important. Even 20, 25, you know, when we're all working more and more remote and.
Right.
We don't have that. Everything is hard on slacks and everything. You don't, you don't know what the other person is really thinking. You can interpret it so many ways. You can't because you don't vocally communicate. Right.
So.
Yeah, I know.
Absolutely. It's.
It's an awesome community. I would. Yeah, I would say it's the single, single biggest impact on my career thus far. I mean, it's, it's absolutely launched my agency and I've never had to. Never had to ask for work. There's always been work provided and problems that needed solving. And so. Yeah.
And it's all because of Dennis.
If I had to name one person. Dennis.
Right, right. Well, I did send you an answering machine, so, you know.
Yeah, you sent me an answering machine. It's still under my desk and it's still unused.
Have not.
I haven't connected it to my 888 tub spot hotline yet.
For those of us unfamiliar with what's going on here, which would be probably everybody but you two. What is this about an answering machine? What are we doing here?
I once solved a question that Dennis had put a bounty on. The bounty was Chris Riley would create a voicemail message like an answering message and come to find out Chris Riley never recorded an answering message.
Yeah, I never asked him.
We should have, should have mentioned something earlier. We just had him on last week. We could have grilled him about that. About not going.
Yeah, yeah. But Dennis Ant made the answering machine and I purchased the phone number that's one digit different than the HubSpot support phone number. So I own 888tub spot.
This is all good. Yeah, and it's, it's the old school answer machine. So, like, this is like, you know, with a tape.
That's brilliant. So what then? Who's gonna be the. Who's gonna be the person on the recording then? If, if Chris isn't gonna.
Yeah, we'll give one more chance.
I'll reach out to him again and hopefully other people who are watching this are all right now. Actually, everyone who is in the chat, please go ahead and slack Chris to, uh.
Yeah, yeah, if you can.
He's in. He's in. Dev Slack at Chris Riley.
Yeah, all at the same time, too. If you could like all within like a five minute span just to be like a WTF moment where you're sitting there, you're like, oh, my God, what broke? Yeah, that'd be great. I'm sure he'll. And we'll blame it on Dennis because.
I don't want to know. We're all going to delete this part of the interview.
We are. We are live. But okay, we definitely need like a dump button and just in case, like something happens. Right.
We do need a button.
We'll put that on.
We should always be 15 seconds ahead.
Yeah, right.
No, that's fine. We'll put it on Dennis's ever growing list of things.
Dennis, add that to your list, please. We'll do, we'll do contact Streamyard about emergency. Emergency cut.
Right, Right.
Or just call it the nick button because that's essentially probably what it'll be used for most often than not. But let me shift gears just a little bit. Going from, you know, just starting out and you know what would be probably one of the things as far as like advice that you've gotten from someone, like, let's say like a mentor that kind of helped you out within the industry, like within your job now. Right. Like, because again, there's always that. My career didn't start to, like, I first started working at a video store and that wasn't going to be, oh, thank you, Netflix for ruining all that. But I really like that job too.
But I could so see you working at a video store. Right.
It was like, now I do it all day long. Yeah, I would do it all day long. I love it. I love movies. Like, that's all I did was because, I mean, that's all you could do at working at a video store. You just watch movies all day. So I've seen like almost every movie ever made. It's. It's quite remarkable the amount of time that you have to spend just like staring at a screen. But mentorship, like, what, what is like one of the things I was trying to bring it back after I just. Conversation. What is some advice that a mentor has given you that's been very influential in, in your career thus far?
Yeah. I mean, in the enterprise world and the corporate world.
What is some advice that a mentor has given you that's been very influential in, in your career thus far?
Yeah. I mean, in the enterprise world and the corporate world sucked into meetings that Discuss the next meeting that discuss what we're going to achieve on the following meeting. And if you're a person that like, has a bias towards action and just like starts on building and builds out an MVP and just starts on thinking and ideating, creating, you're ahead of 95% of people. Like, there's so many people that won't ever do anything until it's like, okay, you have a deadline of tomorrow to get this done. And I'm most definitely guilty of that. But if you're, if you're the type of person that starts on building and showing it off and just being the first one, you're way ahead.
Do you ever find that. Was that hard to get into that mindset? Because I, like, just from like a website building perspective. Right. Like, I was always, oh, this isn't perfect. I need to do this before I can launch it. It's still not like this before. I would just where most people now, you know, looking back on it, it was like you should have just got it out the door and then you could have made iterations, you know, improvements later. Was that hard for you to get? Maybe you haven't, I don't know.
But like time starting and getting the 70%. Yeah, 80% and the 90% to launch is where I get stalled. How.
Why is it so hard? Why is that?
Last three about, like, I worry about server load for a lot of my applications and I'm like, well, if this gets 50 installs and I'm gonna have real problems all the while. I have 30 installs, so I, like, I don't see a path towards 50 installs anytime soon, but I'm worried about the 50 and the 100 installs.
Yeah.
And so I think that's where most of my, like, problems come from. And then you got to set up stripe and you got to connect up billing and you have to send the emails and like, it's easy to write code and get business logic in place. But the last 20%, that's where you over engineer it and new projects get created and then that untitled folder is left to the wayside. So I definitely still have that problem. One thing I found for me that helps, I pay a designer. Like when I want to build out a tool, I pay a designer and I'll shell out $3,000. And I'm like, okay, I now have a sunken cost fallacy that I have to fight with.
Nice.
That's what I've found that helps. Like, you get a valuable thing, you get a beautiful design that you're going to use for your project. And now you have sunken cost fallacy that you have to fight with.
That's great advice. May I borrow $3,000 so I can.
No. How good of a designer are you?
It's just this little side project I'm starting. It's kind of. It's like Facebook, but it's not. It's, you know, sort of different. You know, I always love that.
Is there AI? Of course. If so, like, yeah, yeah, New space.
Shout out to Dustin for the we over engineer the last 20% comment.
Justin knows that all too well. I called Justin and I'm like, hey, is this a good idea? And he was like, yeah, but what happened to the last one? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that one's going to be ruled into this one for me.
It's actually. There's diminishing returns. Like when you start building something, you can actually see the progress very clearly. And like it's, you know, you get that little high on that. And then, well, that last point are all those fixes and things that you don't really get to see the fun stuff.
And I think you can also get caught in the trap of just ideating and talking about your idea. And like, I've heard it described as like idea porn before where it's like, oh, I have this great idea and people are sign an NDA. I don't want to talk to you about my idea. It's the best idea. I'm like, no one's stealing your idea, Bob. If you build it and you have a ton of success, you might get people that copy you, but no one's stealing your idea. It's not that good of an idea. I've never heard an idea where I'm like, oh, I want to go steal that idea because it's that good of an idea. Until you start on building and you start on getting customers and you start on selling. Like, your idea is worth actually $0 because you haven't made any money from it.
Sorry, Bob.
Bob sounds like the Winklevoss twins at this point. Yeah, that's what is. I want to ask you what is kind of like a common myth about your current position, like your, your job in general, like, and it doesn't have to be as general as like tech because, I mean, probably one of the, the biggest things as far as in the tech industry, and I have a feeling your answer is probably going to run along these lines is people asking you just kind of off the wall questions, would that Be a. Oh, that's.
Yeah. I mean, all tech. All tech enthusiasts have that issue where their family members, their friends are convinced that the tech person is literally the only person on this earth that can solve my printer issue.
So true.
I don't know how I became that person, but I'm the only person on this earth that can solve the printer issue. So, obviously, I solve about 10 printer issues every year. It's a monthly occurrence where the printer goes down and I might press the power button. I don't know how to do that. I don't know where the power button is. I think it disconnected from wifi. I'm like, I don't even think you know what WI fi is.
HP should have you on retainer.
You could also Google just as well as I can.
Yeah. But, yeah, printers are my arch nemesis. But in reality. In reality, it is sometimes tough to communicate what I do to the average person that's not in tech or that doesn't necessarily understand a lot of technical terms. Because I'm so used to describing. I'm like, oh, I work with CRMs and I integrate systems. They're like, okay, great. That tells me nothing. You could be a drug dealer. And I'm like, yeah, that's basically true. Ideal solutions. But it is tough to sometimes describe it, and I haven't found the solution for that yet. I still have a very tough time describing what I do to the. To the normies.
Become a developer advocate and tell me how it goes for you. Let's see, abstract a little bit more.
Yeah, yeah. Abstracted a little more. So the people that do the dealing of solutions, I didn't advocate for them.
Yeah, right. What? Just call me Bob.
Just call me Bob.
I'm reading in the chat there, get my Facebook account back.
I had someone ask me.
Yeah, I did.
I got locked out of my Instagram account.
A Realtor. A realtor had that happen to them, and they wanted me to, like, fix the problem. And I'm like, I don't know why you got banned.
Right?
Yeah. Why did you? I'm like, I don't know how you got banned to begin with. And, like, I'm not gonna sit there and fight for you if I don't. I don't even know the person. I was just like, yeah, this is gonna be weird. I'm gonna be, like, fighting for this person and I'm gonna find out that they, like, committed murder or something. And, like, I'm the one defending their Facebook. It's like.
Yeah. You're like, oh, my Gosh, I can't believe I did that accident.
Let it be known, if you have any social media issues, Nick Laporte is going to help you out with all your problems. You can find them on the developer Slack.
Yeah, I've had people contact me before, like, hey, could I have issues with my Instagram account. I'm wondering if you could help me get back into it. And it's like, perma locked. And I'm like, there's no that. Like, you can't even password reset that. That's like, you have to elevate a case to Instagram support. There's nothing I can do there. And I don't. And then they'll tell you, like, trust and safety team. They're not in my contacts book.
No, speed dial it. I got it. Hold on. Yeah, hold on.
I have to imagine that Instagram trust and safety person just has their phone blowing up all day long. I bet they can't tell anyone what they do. No, that's like working for the CIA right there. Like, yeah, for sure. On what you do.
I always equate that kind of stuff to, like, telling. Because my. My wife sometimes does that same thing where she's like, well, this is broken. Can't you just fix it? And I'm like, okay. And she works in. In the medical industry, right. So I'm like, imagine if. And. And this usually works. But I said, like, im if. You know, I said I was a doctor. Right. But I didn't tell you what kind of doctor. And you came to me and said, oh, my God, I need you to fix my foot. And I'm like, well, I'm not a podiatrist. I'm a heart surgeon. And you're like, well, what's. It doesn't matter. You're a doctor. Just fix this. And it's like, it doesn't work that way because I don't have literally no experience in feet. I'm a heart surgeon. Like, there's a different, like. And, you know, because it's always hard to, like. And it's not. And it's not a knock on, you know, you know, anybody that has that approach. But it's like, it's really hard sometimes to explain that because it just. People, like, it's very easy to, like, wrap all of that up into one nice little package and say, well, that's tech. And you are. You work in tech, therefore you are, you know, and it's. Yeah. Because it's such a black box compared to, like, other things. Like, even the Doctor example is a little bit like, people understand that a lot more where they're like, well, I've been to the doctor. I've been like, people haven't worked in tech or people don't understand, like, some of the inner workings. So even that example is a little bit more easier for people to digest.
It's.
Yeah, it's just one of those very, very weird things.
So such a bad doctor. We lucky he is a death.
Do not go to Nick for any. Yeah, all your. All your foot issues. You actually send them photos of any issues you have.
I'm just gonna have an inbox full of feet pictures. That'd be great. Yeah, that's fantastic. I'd be like Dr. Nick from the Simpsons, essentially. That would be like the equivalent.
The biggest thing I get is like.
I can fix your printer issue. That's not what I do. Yes, I can fix it.
That's the thing. Or it's the instant graph. Like, you know, someone like, you can build that, right? Yeah, sure. I guess we'll have it tomorrow, right? It's like, no, no, that's not how any of this works whatsoever. My wife has a billion and a half ideas for me to all these apps that I should be building concurrently for her.
I got called about one the other day, and I was like, you know, this could probably be a Google Sheet. And you just input information on the Google Sheet and share it publicly. Whoa. Yeah. But it would be really nice if there was an interface and, like, you download the app and you sign up and you take pictures. And I was like, but you could make it a Google Sheet just to start and see if you have, like, any product fit and just like, get an MVP out there if it grows from there. Like, let's grow it. But start. Start simple, start small.
That's very good advice.
Yeah, absolutely. Let me flip the script on you a little bit here. Let me say. Pretend I'm. Pretend I'm.
I'm asking questions.
Well, technically. But let me pretend I'm brand new to tech, right? Let's say I'm fresh out of school. And you. What. What advice would you give to somebody if you were mentoring? Like, let's say. Let's say I'm a programmer, right? And I'm just fresh out of school. What kind of life advice would you pass down to somebody who is just starting out?
Yeah, that's. That's. It is a tough question because there's always like, this little deep down part of your. Part of your brain that's like, if I Mislead them. They're about to spend two years of their life and not get anywhere. And they're gonna blame me for all their career if it messes up. And I'm like, part of that's on you, and part of that is you needing drive. If you're asking me like, hey, what do I do? And just like, what do I do? And I don't have any interest in anything, that's like, a really tough question to answer. And it's kind of like you have to do some soul searching there to find what you're interested in and what you're passionate about. I think school and college can sometimes beat that out of people. And you can go in with a passion and you can come out and you're like, okay, now I got a lot of knowledge that. That was useless eight years ago. And it's even more useful. I think you have to keep a passion for. For a particular subject. And it could be a small passion. It could be, hey, I just like building cool websites that are unique, that use unique fonts. Like, that's great. And.
Is it me or did it Carter?
Yeah, just for, like, a quick second. Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
It was such a good talk, too. I was really enjoying it.
I know. I was getting into it. There was a flow. There was fluent. I had entered. Yeah.
First I thought my subscription expired. I thought I had to reopen.
And for two more minutes of that talk, you can Venmo me $10. But you have to have a passion. You have to have a passion for it. And, like, you have to continue your passion and find a community that will, like, that'll make your passion even stronger. Bri was talking about the other day. It was like, hey, you don't do tech without a community. And you have to have community meetups. Hopefully you have, like, a physical community, but if not, there's so many great online communities. If you're passionate about HubSpot or you do HubSpot at your job, come join the Dev slack connect on LinkedIn. Love to chat with you and make sure you're connected and get to learn all the new things. Come join one of the boot camps. The HubSpot boot camps are great ways to meet people. Nice situation. Yeah. I teach one of the boot camps, so. So come join my boot camps here. Customization boot camp.
So, yeah, and those products you do on the side don't have to do anything. Right? It's just like, you don't have to make a million dollars with it. Just like, no, like, I love how Bree's doing these little. She did something. CSS building was a Pokemon ball. I was like, yeah, awesome. Do that, right?
Yeah.
The small stuff that you can keep yourself up to date and keep yourself sharp. Because I think that's one of the things like you. One of the. I think one of the easiest pitfalls to fall into is to lose kind of your. Is to get dull when it comes to, like, your coding expertise. Like, I've, I've noticed that just in like, you know, being like an ecosystem quality. It's just, there's a lot of reviewing. So it's not like you're, you know, devoid of code altogether. It's just you're rarely writing it versus critiquing it. And it gets, you know, you get that kind of staleness. And then that's where I would say, like most of all. The imposter syndrome starts to creep in sometimes because you're like, I haven't done this in, you know, X amount of time. Like, do I still remember? You know, and then you're like scrambling and you're like, code academy. Like everything you possibly can think of all of a sudden because you're just. You're need to get that overwhelming fear. And then you like, you force yourself to do a project whether it's good, bad, or has any use whatsoever. You just kind of like fear is a good motivating factor. So it's. But yeah, that's. That's one of those things that I've always noticed that creeps up when you're not.
I think it's. I think it's increasingly easier to fall into that trap nowadays with AI. Oh, just said it tried to go.
A whole episode and here we go.
I know, I'm sorry.
Here we go.
I'm just trying to get us a higher rank on YouTube. But I think it's increasingly easier to fall into that trap because you're like, oh, AI could do this. And maybe I review it three times, but eventually it could do it. I've had people that are like, hey, I just had 500 lines spit out for a two line change. And I knew where the two line change was. And I was like, I get that. I totally get that. Like, you're not crazy for doing that because I've done that. I've asked for two line change and I've known where the two line change is all just because I was lazy and I didn't necessarily want to make that code change. And it's not, it's not bad. But you do you, like, dull your technical knowledge.
So true.
And, like, you have to practice it to keep it sharp. And so definitely find a project that you're passionate about. Hopefully it's personal, but if you don't have, like, a fun, personal project that you're working on, find a little piece of code at your job or find a technical solution that you can build and build it in a fun way and build it in a way that you would have, like, enjoyed building it when you're. When you're younger. I think that's the easiest way to.
Build a pickleball round robin app to generate teams. There you go.
That's it. And coding with AI is super fun. So I'm not saying don't code with AI. I love coding with AI, but code in a way that makes. Do you feel like you're still a developer?
Yeah. Remember that AI is your assistant, not the. Not your senior.
Well, I'm just going to put it on the record now that when they do become our overlords, I am all for AI. Just. Just, you know, just. Just in case.
I've been hedging my bets this entire time, Nick. Everything I've said has been, like, negative and then, like, too positive.
So there you go.
You're just keeping that balance, but just being a little bit on the pro side. So that way, when they take over, you know, we'll be the last to be sacrificed. That's good. That's good. I like that. That's a good. That's a good thing. Well, I want to thank you, Carter, because this has been absolutely fantastic. And these are the type of com. Like I say. I say this quite often, but it always rings true that these are the type of conversations that make this not only enjoyable, but is literally the dream come true. Like, again, me, AG and Dennis, when we sat around and we talked about this, like, these are the conversations and the way they come about, and not just, you know, insightful, but fun. Like. And I want to thank you for joining us. It's, you know, it's always a risk. It's always a risk. And I mean, less of A risk is AJ's not here, but it's always a risk. But why don't you tell everybody where they can find you and, you know, any of the projects that you're working on. I know you said that you're actually running one of the boot camps, so definitely people should sign up for that. But tell everybody where they can find you and if they want to get in touch with you. If you want them to where they can do that?
No, I'm more than happy to talk with anyone that lasted an hour and three minutes into this. I think maybe three people are going to come to the end of this and be like, oh yeah, never mind, I can find them here. But you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Dev Slack. Connect on LinkedIn. Connect on Dev Slack Chat. Hit me up. Join the Dev Bootcamp if you're looking to build out REACT cards and and learn React and HubSpot and all that fun new stuff and just like level up your customers hubspots and learn and join a big. There's like a massive community that's now building out CRM cards. So it's an awesome community there. But yeah, connect over there. Hit me up. Always happy to chat.
Carter, A question from Alexander. Revops was mentioned, but let's just change that to CRM Dev. What's the experience level needed for that? I don't think we can answer the RevOps Boot Camp one boot camp we.
Can'T necessarily answer, but I'll send you Alexander, I'm snippeting your name right now and hopefully I grab the correct one in Dev Slack if you're in Dev Slack. But I'll shoot you over the instructor for the Revops bootcamp and can get you in contact with them. Usually you can get in with very minimum experience for the Dev Boot Camp. You do need a curiosity to learn. I would say that's. That's like bare minimum experience. But along with that you probably should have about a year worth of like knowledge or just playing around experience in JavaScript. That's not. That's going to really set you up for success. You could jump in with no experience. It's just going to be a little bit of a tougher hill to climb. Not saying you can't do that, but I. And we've had students that have had success with that. But if you really want to have fun, probably have about a year worth of experience in JavaScript and you're going to be set up for success.
Sweet.
Excellent. Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, we've wrapped up another episode successfully, I must say. And if I do get an inbox. Just a little side note, if I do get an inbox full of feedbacks, they're going directly to AJ So when he comes back, he'll have a nice little surprise for him when he returns. Go ahead, send those in. That's great. I just want to say from everybody.
Here, where do we reach out for the feedback. Is there a feedback form somewhere? Can we ask for guests on here?
See, we have something that we're setting up. I'm just afraid to open it up because then if there is an email address you could send stuff to, then the feed pixel start coming in. Definitely, we will set that up if you do want to be a guest. Because I've talked to a couple of people just recently that asked about being guests on here and you know how they go about doing that.
Community members.
Oh, absolutely.
Like members. That would be awesome to have.
The one thing I must say is the outpouring of community members that want to actually be on here and do this. Because again, the anticipation of starting something like this was just, you know, we'll. We'll start talking with people and maybe people will listen, maybe. And it's like the more we keep doing this because I have like delusions of grandeur and Dennis is the one that kind of keeps me grounded. So it's one of those things where it's like. But as we keep doing this, more and more and more people keep like. I just spoke with a developer just recently on a Zoom call about a question about a theme and he mentioned it. He's like, oh, yeah, I saw you on this. I said, I'm like, oh. I'm like, you watched it? I was like, oh, okay. He's like, yeah, I saw your name. So I watched it and I was just. It was like one of those things where I was like, it was a nice feeling because you like anything, whether you're making an app or you're making nothing. Like you said, you've got that initial. I'm going to build this. Are people going to use this or is this going to be like a thing or so?
Yeah, to the world. Yeah, that out to the world. Yeah, that's the important part.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Truly. Truly. Absolutely. Oh, I like that. Nice. Thank you.
So we did there.
We spare no expense. We spare no expense.
Right, right, right. 10 million dollar URL. Right. The domain. But yeah, well, if there's going to be a form, it'll probably be on that and you can submit there. I don't think there is presently, but we'll work on that soon.
Right now there's a form to get notified when a new episode gets posted, but yeah, we don't have a guest form yet, but we'll put that up there for sure. Because that's something where I do. To be clear too, it doesn't have to just be developers or anything like that. Within the community or within HubSpot. I want to talk to developers. There's people that I know that I've worked with that are developers that are just fantastic people that I want to get on here and talk with and just those type of insights. Yes. We always want to tie it back to HubSpot because, you know, there's. There's a. There's a certain, certain connection there that you can't deny. We all work there. But. Yeah, but at the end of the day, too, it's like, it's one of those things where I want to be able to tell the developer story from everybody's perspective and then. Yeah, that's what makes it magical. And your story, absolutely, 100% is one of those things. Like I said that. Got it. I can't thank you enough because it's. It's good. It's fantastic. Yeah.
And. And just to say, just plug, you know, upcoming episodes. We've got a pretty good lineup already actually set.
You guys let Chris Riley on, so you let anyone on.
Yeah, it was hit or miss. Hit or miss there, Carter. We weren't sure if we should.
Plus we made. Plus we made AJ a co host. So, I mean, it's not like. And I can say that he's not here.
The bar is very, very low.
No, we do. Yeah. We have some really great guests coming up. I know. Next week will be talking with Jonna, who's a member of the ecosystem quality team. That's going to be fantastic. Yeah. So we've got. And there's. There's a bunch of names out there that we have talked with, and we're just trying to set up some times. But yeah, no, it's. I'm excited because I like doing this. And like. And again, Carter, like, you coming back for another episode. Absolutely, 110%, like, as we go. Yeah. So it's like I have delusions of grandeur. Right. And I'm just like, they're coming to fruition. I'm just, I'm. I kind of run at like 150 miles an hour, and Dennis is the one that needs to kind of be the police officer that's just like, hey, going a little faster, buddy. What's the rush? It's like, you know, it's one of those things. But, but, but again, just to kind of wrap things up for everybody, I want to thank you again, Carter, for coming on fantastic guest and really thank you for everything that you've done. Like, you don't have to answer all those questions. Right. You don't have to take all of that time.
Hey, don't stop, though. Don't stop.
No, no. That's what I'm saying. You did.
Like, you do have to. And there's a requirement.
When cloning becomes legal, you will be about five of you will be the customer service end of the developer slack, essentially. So you'll be. Yeah, that's. We're just waiting for that time. Right. Dolly the Sheep. And then we move on to Carter. So we'll be good there. We'll be good there. So. But again, from everyone here, thank you for listening, and we'll be seeing you next week.
Peace out.
