October 22, 2024 • 28 mins
Cody Norman, an independent Ruby on Rails consultant and creator of SpotSquid, takes us on a fascinating journey through the intersection of technology and tattoo artistry. Discover how Cody transformed a traditionally paper-based industry into a tech-savvy environment, using customer feedback to tackle the unique challenges faced by tattoo artists and shop owners. With anecdotes from his tech conference experiences and insights into his consulting career, Cody's story is both relatable and inspiring for anyone looking to merge creativity with technology.
In this episode, you'll unlock the secrets to finding your niche and the delicate balance between diverse client projects and passion-driven endeavors. We explore Cody's path to becoming a potential expert in Action Mailbox and email solutions within the Rails community, as well as his strategies for creating impactful educational content. Cody's experiences offer valuable lessons on testing email functionality and the potential of establishing oneself as an authoritative figure in a specialized area.
As Cody shares his journey through various tech conferences like Rocky Mountain Ruby and RailsConf, listeners will be captivated by his engaging presentations and the excitement of future opportunities. We delve into the anticipation of attending events like MicroConf and RailsConf and the potential breakthroughs these gatherings can bring. Wrapping up with Cody's entrepreneurial aspirations, this episode promises insights and inspiration for developers eager to carve their own path in the dynamic world of software development.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
Code and the Coding Coders whoCode it.
I'm your host, drew Bragg, andI'm joined today by my friend,
cody Norman.
Cody, for anyone who hasn't hadthe pleasure of meeting you yet
, would you please do a quickintroduction?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Sure, my name is Cody Norman.
I'm an independent Ruby onRails consultant and live in a
small mountain town here inColorado.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Fantastic, and you've also spoken at a few
conferences.
You also are running your ownlittle.
What would you call it?
A company, a SaaS product?
What is the proper term forSpotSquid?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's definitely a SaaS.
I've heard the term micro SaaSthrown around.
Maybe that's closer, justbecause right now it's not
taking up all of my time, butfor some reason I keep finding
myself gravitating back totrying to make tools and
software stuff for tattooartists and shops.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's such a cool thing and I think we'll get into
that a little bit For anyonenew to the show.
The way this is going to work.
I'm going to ask Cody threequestions.
I'm going to ask him what he'sworking on, what kind of
blockers he has.
If he doesn't have a currentblocker, he can talk about a
recent blocker he had, how hewent about solving it.
And then I'm going to ask himto tell us something cool, new
or interesting that he'srecently learned or discovered
or even built.
(01:12):
It doesn't have to be codingrelated, but this is code and
the code encoders who code it,so it absolutely can be.
All that being said, cody, whatare you working?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
on.
Right now I'm working on a fewdifferent client projects.
I've also been spending moretime with SpotSquid.
I've started getting a littlemore traction mainly with my
actual tattoo artists, so now Ikind of have the rare
opportunity to dog food it onboth ends.
So I get to run it on the shopside to help them out, but also
(01:42):
get to use it as a client too.
Perfect, that's the best ofboth them out, but also get to
use it as a client too.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Perfect.
That's the best of both worlds,right?
You get to see how your app ishandling both sides of the
interaction when you're tryingto get SpotSquid out to more
artists.
Is it just word of mouth thatyou're hoping for, or do you
have a strategy?
Or is it because it's a microSaaS, it's just for you and your
current tattoo artist, andbecause it's a micro SaaS, it's
just for you and your currenttattoo artist and maybe it'll go
(02:07):
?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
from there.
One thing I've been figuringout is I feel like my best
channel for traction is going tobe referrals and word of mouth
from other artists.
Most shops are kind of hesitantabout doing anything new.
I think a lot of that's becausethere's still a lot of the like
apprentice and craftsmen andearn your dues type of thing,
and a lot of these people havebeen practicing their craft for
(02:31):
10, 20 plus years and they don'thave new frameworks and
languages to learn every twoyears, so they're very hesitant
to change.
But honestly, for probably thefirst couple of years of trying
all this out, most of mycustomer research was like while
I was being tattooed, kind ofsetting that as the baseline.
It makes it a little bit easieronce I have something that I
(02:51):
think can help them out a littlebetter.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Cool, and it just occurred to me that, because you
and I have spoken aboutSpotSquid a few times, I might
have more knowledge than youraverage listener.
Can you give a brief overviewof what SpotSquid is?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
knowledge than your average listener.
Can you give a brief overviewof what SpotSquid is?
The best explanation is it is asoftware application to help
tattoo shops manage businessoperations.
And that's kind of purposelyvague, mostly because I'm trying
to talk to the customers asmuch as possible and figure out
their biggest pain points, totry to deliver a painkiller
instead of a vitamin.
(03:25):
So I've been doing more thingsmanually, testing out a lot of
stuff, these quick experiments,to get feedback.
So it's something where I'm notexactly sure how to explain it,
but I do have some ways that Iknow that I've been helping
shops and helping clients andsmooth out a whole old and
traditionally paper process.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Sounds like a lot of fun too, especially just the
thought of being able to go inget tattooed.
While you're getting tattooed,you're talking to the artists
about what problems they have,and then you're going home and
building a solution for thatproblem.
It almost sounds like theperfect world for a software
developer.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I've worked at a ton of startups over the years and
built a lot of things, but thebiggest thing that I'm noticing
that's making the differencewith this is I've never really
worked on something where Ireally love the customers, so I
really love hanging out intattoo shops and working with
them and trying to help them dowhat they do best more, so not
(04:21):
have to worry about the otherstuff, and I think that's made a
really big difference as far astrying to get feedback and
trying to get a solution thatworks for them instead of
something that I think wouldwork as a developer.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
In addition to other cool things that you've been
working on.
You recently spoke at RockyMountain, Ruby.
What was your topic?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I spoke on Action Mailbox Awesome.
This was the same talk that Igave at RailsConf.
I've given the similar talk ata couple other meetups
throughout the year, but thiswas the only other conference
that I've spoke at and really mysecond conference ever.
I just kind of got into thespeaking thing earlier this year
, so it was nice to kind of havetwo, and there's not much close
(05:03):
to Bailey, but Boulder is aboutas close as it gets.
It really felt like a homecourt advantage for that.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I was super bummed to miss Rocky Mountain Ruby this
year.
Last year was an awesomeconference.
Boulder is such a cool town.
It's located in the heart ofeverything, super walkable town.
I know you did some cool stuffon lunch when I was there.
We actually climbed one of theflat irons on lunch because why
not?
It's right there.
It's such a cool conference.
Other than your talk, which Iassume was the best talk of the
(05:33):
conference because I've seenyour talk before and it is
awesome what was your favoritetalk?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's really tough.
There was a lot of great talks.
I really enjoyed Marco's talk,mostly because it reminds me of
all the things that I should beusing with Hotwire and all the
tooling and stuff that are outthere that I tend to forget
about until I'm doing the exactsame things that he mentions.
That it can prevent, like notremembering how to name my
controllers or the actions orsomething like that, and that
(06:01):
was probably the most relatablefor something that I could take
away and start integrating intomy day-to-day.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So for preparation for your talk, you deployed a
Rails 8 application with all thedefaults using Hatchbox.
So you didn't use Kamal, youused Hatchbox, which props
probably would be my approach to.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But what was it like to deploy a pretty much Rails
new standard and overall itworked out pretty well and one
(06:47):
of the things that I noticed, Ithink, this type of setup where
it's all SQLite and all runningon the app, especially for this
particular demo app.
We didn't really have any viewsor any other stuff that it had
to deal with and the one thingthat I noticed is it just felt
so fast because it's writing tothe file and processing the jobs
(07:07):
and so Solid Q SQLite, seeingall those put together and
seeing how it works on adecently provisioned server.
I think it was like a two gigDigitalOcean box with nothing
else running on it, all SQLiteand processing all the emails,
storing storage on the disk,which is the first time that
I've done.
Typically it doesn't work toowell with ActionFox stuff, but
(07:30):
wanted to try it.
It seemed like it worked and itwas a really cool experience
and I shipped it on Friday and Ijust kept cramming things in
there to see how much I couldget and was able to get a few
different examples as well as acouple of hidden Easter eggs
within the email set.
No one discovered, but maybenext time.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
The fun of Easter eggs is always making the Easter
eggs more than waiting for themto be found, because sometimes
they're not.
That's cool.
In all of the things thatyou're working on, what kind of
blockers have you been runninginto?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The biggest blocker I've been running into is trying
to figure out my niche.
Where am I the most useful andthe most happy and the overlap
of the most productive things?
I can work on?
Doing the consulting stuff.
That's been interesting, andI've been building other
people's apps for 10 plus yearsnow, which is fun, but I feel
(08:25):
like I tend to do my best workand have the best results for
things that I work on myself.
I don't think that'snecessarily saying that I'm
better.
I think, if anything, it mayjust be the fact of being able
to make a decision, whether it'sthe right one or not, and just
move on really quickly, which Ithink helps refine and lead into
(08:47):
other fun things.
So trying to figure out how Ican do more of that, how that
can be viable and sustainableand still be able to make a
living and be successful.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Well, it sounds like you're on your way to being the
action mailbox guy, becauseyou've done the two talks now
and I've seen one of them, and Iknow from at least that one
that you definitely have yourknowledge on that topic down
more than most of us who haveonly dabbled with it, and you've
also recently published acourse on it, right, yes, and
how is that going?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
so far it's been going pretty well.
It was definitely something newfor me and learned a lot.
I think one of the biggesttakeaways I had was, as I was
about to publish it, I've done ahandful of YouTube videos to
kind of get my feet wet, butrealizing that course videos
should probably be a lotdifferent than YouTube videos
Because everyone kind of hasmore context, you don't have to
(09:40):
explain or hold people's handsas much.
They should probably be a lotshorter.
People normally watch them inbatches.
So trying to figure outbasically how I would like to
take a course and instructionand everything that way, so
trying to cut down everything asmuch as possible to get really
focused and not a lot of fluffto meet like a certain time
(10:00):
limit or something.
So that was really interesting.
And then also the other thing Ienjoyed was digging in deeper
to testing and how I can setthings up in a development
environment and figured out afew easy, quick ways to use the
Ruby Mail Jam to create all thestuff that I need, especially if
there's like specific headersor reply tos or things like that
(10:24):
, and then write those to a filethat I can just copy and paste
and paste directly in the Railsconductor source thing, so I
don't have to try to send myselflive emails back and forth and
pull the raw source from there.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I have always shied away from any kind of email
testing because I think what youwere alluding to it kind of is
a pain in the ass.
You're doing a lot of manualwork.
I hadn't thought to use theRuby Mail Gem.
That sounds like a whole othercourse.
Maybe that's your niche.
You just got to start rollingout these courses of like I'm
going to solve all of your emailwoes in Rails, because there's
(10:59):
a lot of them.
There's a lot of email woes.
But is that a viable niche?
Do you think for you you couldpull a Jason Sweat?
Jason Sweat is a fantasticRails developer.
He's a good, solid consultant,but then people in our community
know him as the testing guy.
Is that something that youthink you're looking for?
Where you're like I'm a solidconsultant and I'd continue to
(11:22):
do my consulting to pay thebills.
But also in the community I'mCody the action mailbox guy or
the email guy.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, that's an interesting question and
something I've been thinkingabout.
And, like anything, skills andknowledge can atrophy pretty
quickly.
So I think, because I wrote ablog post and then I gave a talk
and then I gave more talks,I've been pretty consistently
doing stuff with action mailboxover the past few months or so
and I know that whenever I domove to something after about
(11:51):
six months or so, I've alreadyhad to re-consult my own blogs
several times about how to dostuff.
So I think a lot of this isjust trying to document
everything that I have and I'velearned before I forget it.
And because I'm talking aboutit, people are also asking me
more questions.
So now I know what people arecurious about and I could kind
(12:12):
of work that in.
So it gets a little bit easierto start sharing information on
that.
As far as whether it's viable, Idon't think so.
I think it's something that isprobably pretty easy for a team
to pick up.
If you've worked with ActiveJobbefore, then you can get spun
up on processing inbound emailspretty quickly.
I think, if anything, it's agood example of showing how I
(12:35):
can pick apart and learn stuffand try to relay information to
other people and take somethingthat sounds kind of bland and
try to convince people to watchtwo plus hours of videos on
parsing inbound email Sure.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Okay, that makes sense.
I haven't had the pleasure ofdoing inbound email stuff too
much.
My last job we didn't have aprocess but we weren't on Action
Mailbox.
It was something that we werelooking at, potentially moving
to, and if I had seen your talkslash, had access to your course
prior to leaving there, I mighthave used it as the springboard
(13:12):
to actually get that projectdone or suggest it to someone
because it would have solved thehomegrown headache that we had.
But it makes sense that it'spotentially not something that
you're going to market yourselfas the email guy.
For the whole blockers thing,was you talking about how to
figure out what you are in theindustry, carve out your niche?
(13:34):
I mean, where do you see beinga jack of all trades, master of
none, as being a blocker?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
The way it kind of acts as a blocker is it attracts
certain types of work that'sprobably closer to like
commodity work Just tradinghourly time to fix this thing,
submit the invoice and move on,so not really having a chance to
invest in building a product,refining stuff, which are things
that I really enjoy and I thinkI'm pretty good at.
(14:03):
Prior to my development life, Iworked in sales and used to
work in the mortgage industryand made 100 plus calls a day,
so reaching out to people andtalking to them about stuff
isn't super foreign to me, and Iknow that that can be to a lot
of developers.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, so you're hoping to find a little bit more
of a way to be involved inprojects, rather than the guy
that they're just like hey, weneed X done.
Please go do it.
Come back to us when you'redone.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Right, and with that I think, having several smaller
clients and working on a lot ofdifferent projects, there's
always a deadline soon.
Someone always needs something,so that's always a little bit
difficult, especially withconferences and speaking
engagements and things like thatcoming up.
It kind of requires me toshoehorn in those interesting
(14:52):
opportunities in betweenwherever I can get to that
client.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right.
If only we didn't have bills topay.
It's always interesting to meto talk to consultants whether
it be like someone who works forThoughtBot or for TestDouble or
for Evil Martians versus whatI've always done in my career
and that is work for a companythat has a product and I work on
said product.
It's always interesting to hearthe different types of
(15:20):
struggles and the differentapproaches to work, because in
some ways what you do soundsvery appealing to me.
I get to work on something newvery frequently.
Everything's kind of new andfresh and I'm always learning
something because I'm working onthe next thing.
But then when I hear you orJeremy Smith or whoever talk
about the work, it does kind ofsound like man.
(15:40):
It would be so nice to be ableto latch onto a product and help
it grow, not just from a go,build it, but having actual
input.
So I'm always interested abouthearing about those particular
challenges.
So what is something new, coolor interesting that you've
recently learned or discoveredor built?
(16:01):
And it doesn't have to becoding related, because I know
you do a lot of stuff that isn'tcoding also, but what is
something that would fall intothat category?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, I think the Rails beta app that I deployed
for Rocky Mountain Ruby.
That's pretty cool and hadgoing to spin up a Rails 8 app
for toy demo, for fun app.
What is your key takeaway?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
or takeaways even.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I think one of the biggest takeaways is maybe
not for every application, but Idefinitely feel more
comfortable using SQLite formultiple databases in something
that maybe not production.
It's not like it's making money, but I did put up live email
addresses in front of a liveaudience for them to email and
no one shook their fist at me,so I think they all made it
(17:03):
there and that was fascinatingto see.
It looked like everythingprocessed really quick.
Also, playing around with someof the action mailbox stuff, one
of the patterns I think isreally helpful is like an
informational mailbox.
So like you email food atwhatevercom or coffee and then I
would send back a list ofoptions walkable within 10
minutes of the venue.
(17:24):
Things like that are reallyeasy and they all seem to
process really quickly.
The other thing that was reallynice was because I'm only
replying back to email addressesthat I received.
I had a 0% bounce rate forthese emails and also didn't
require anyone to sign up orconfirm or anything like that.
(17:45):
They were just able to send anemail and get some use out of it
.
Some of them were unwillinglyentered into the Easter egg
contest, which no one found, butfor those two informational
mailboxes.
The reply to address was set togo to the special inbox where
the first one who would reply tothe email got sent back a gift
(18:06):
card for a local spot close tothe area.
So that's a great idea beingable to set up and facilitate
that kind of stuff withoutrequiring user accounts for,
like a quick short event likeconference or startup week,
something like that.
That was a lot of fun.
And using SQLite, everythingwas pretty fast and performant.
And with Action Mailbox, mostof these emails are set to be
(18:28):
incinerated or deleted within 30days anyway, so I don't have to
worry about syncing or a lot ofthe other issues, and I think
it was a great use case forsomething time-boxed and really
focused for like a specific task.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, that is a cool and interesting use case of that
technology.
I hadn't thought aboutsomething like that, but now you
got the wheels turning in myhead about all the cool things
you could potentially do withAction Mailbox and I'm not going
to try.
And on the wheels turning in myhead about all the cool things
you could potentially do withaction mailbox and I'm not going
to try.
And on air, have my littleexploratory, I will have to play
.
When you chose to deploy withhatchbox versus kamal 2, as the
(19:08):
case is, was that a hey, I'mdoing enough rails 8 and rails 8
defaults, like I'll stick withsomething I know.
Or was there a specificconstraint that was like
Hatchbox is going to make thisbetter or easier than Kamal?
Or was it just like I can'ttackle learning another new
thing right now?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We're going to stick with tried and true that was
pretty much it Basically justtrying to bite off new
technologies and new learningsin digestible chunks, so if
something was going wrong, Iwould have a pretty reasonable
idea where it would be.
I've deployed a lot of apps onHatchbox for a few years now.
I'm very happy, and that seemedlike a good kind of way to
(19:47):
split the learning into adigestible chunk where I could
also get it done in time too,because this was something that
it's like maybe I can make thislive and I was able to deploy it
Friday afternoon and then Ithink I got the actual email
account connected and approvedSunday night.
So all of it was pretty lastminute.
(20:08):
So anything for speedy deployswas a big help.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, I also assume you run into issues with Kamal.
You're kind of stuck with maybea GitHub repo of putting an
issue out there and at leastwith Hatchbox, shout out to
Hatchbox's support team.
You can actually talk tosomeone to solve your problem if
it got to that level.
So I can understand thatExactly.
Somehow we've ripped throughall three questions.
(20:33):
Is there anything else youwanted to talk about, anything
you want to revisit, because wecan talk for longer?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
you see talks.
I don't have any moreconferences or talks lined up.
Are you going to ruby conf?
It's in november and I saw somepictures of myself at rocky
mountain ruby.
I was like, oh my god, I lookso high that's fair.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Chicago's a trip for you coming out of colorado, so
that is fair.
Will you be at the lastRailsConf?
I'm pretty sure I will.
(21:11):
I saw it was going to be thereception.
You're pretty much the firstother person I've talked to
about the July date, becausewhen I first heard July, I was
like July, no one does aconference in July.
And I was like actually, that'sgenius, you're not conflicting.
I couldn't go to Rocky Mountain, ruby, because I went to
Railsworld.
I've had to pick and choosecertain other ones because it
(21:33):
was a little too close toanother conference I was already
speaking at or committed togoing to, and I couldn't go to
Blue Ridge or I couldn't go to,like I said, rocky Mountain.
So having it in July, whenthere's just nothing around and
people are already taking a lotof time off during that time, so
maybe they can shoehorn it intoa vacation where they take the
family it's almost genius.
(21:54):
I hope that's how most peoplefeel about it.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, I think it's great.
I've been considering attendinga micro comp sometime soon.
I've spoke to a lot of people,a lot of Rails people who have
been to those in the past, butthey've always been pretty close
to Rails comp, usually likewithin a couple weeks or so.
So for that same reason it wasalways tough for me to make it.
So maybe this year that'ssomething that I can work into
(22:17):
the schedule and still be ableto make RailsConf.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Are you going to continue to submit the Action
Mailbox talk to conferences tokeep giving it?
Are you going to try to doanother talk or is talking
taking a backseat for a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I'm not sure I really enjoy doing it and I love
having people come up to meafterwards and tell me about
things that they have ideas tobuild now, so I think that's
great.
As far as like submitting it, Idon't know if I'll continue to
submit it.
If I do, it would be somewherelike tropical or somewhere in
Europe, like not anywhere in theUS.
(22:52):
But if nothing else, I think Iwill probably just keep it
around for meetup organizers tobe able to hop in for them,
because at this point I don'tneed much notice, can typically
give the talk pretty quickly and, yeah, help out meetup
organizers that may be shortspeaker or need someone to fill
in for a month.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So Action Mailbox kind of your thing came from
your own learnings, sort ofself-documenting as a blog post
turned it into a talk.
If you had to guess, either bysaying this is something that
I've recently learned about thatI think I have enough wisdom to
part on others, or I want tolearn enough that I could
potentially have enough contentfor a talk what do you think the
(23:31):
next potential talk level topicwould be?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
That's a good question and I don't think I
have an answer for it right now.
Perfectly reasonable answer,because one of the things that I
kind of realized and shout outto Kevin Murphy for giving this
advice but being able to makethe talk personal in some way
just makes a huge difference asfar as delivering it and feeling
more comfortable, and I thinkthat is something super
(23:57):
important that I'll probablykeep in mind now, instead of
just looking for topics thatpeople may be interested in,
trying to figure out ways that Ican, you know, relate it to me,
which is really hard to dountil you've kind of given the
talk once or twice.
But the one thing that I'velearned is being able to kind of
make things personal and giveyour own spin on things seems to
(24:19):
help it go over a little biteasier.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, and come up with cool demo videos of you
sending an email to start yourtruck at the end, which was
still probably the coolestending to a talk I have ever
seen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was so happy I didn't tell anyone about that
ahead of time.
I had reminders in my phone andeverything like don't just say
it, don't tell anyone, but I'mglad you were able to pop in for
that, and getting to see peoplereact to that in person was
something I didn't really thinkabout, but it's been amazing.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
It's cool because it's one of those hey look, this
is a cool thing you can do.
You would never do this, no onewould do that.
But at the same time, seeing ithappen gives you this feeling
of empowerment, of like, oh shit, if you can start a truck with
an email, I can do anything withan email.
The sky is the limit.
I am limited by my imaginationonly to do this.
(25:14):
I think that's what's so coolabout it is it's this ridiculous
.
I would never do this.
But at the same time, look atall the things you could do if
you can imagine it.
I love it and I will second yourshout out to Kevin Murphy.
Having him watch your talk andgive feedback is such a gift
because he is a solid, solidspeaker and is a wealth of
(25:34):
knowledge on making talkspersonal and making them great
and making them engaging.
And my talks would be half asgood if I didn't have him giving
me feedback.
Second, your shout out Cool.
Well, I'm bummed I won't seeyou in RubyConf in Chicago, but
I'm pumped to see you atRailsConf in July and hopefully
(25:55):
somewhere in between.
But I'm pumped to see you atRailsConf in July and hopefully
somewhere in between.
But who knows, we'll see.
I definitely won't be at aMicroConf, because that's not
what I do.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Right, yeah, and that's still out there.
But yeah, for the first timethat it's kind of on the table
and think it might line up wellwith where I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, that's exciting and it sounds like a good way
of potentially solving yourblocker, of finding that niche
right, Like that's sort of whatmicroconf is is like it's people
who run micro businesses.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
There always seem to be a pretty good rails
contingent there, which so Ithink that would be an easy way
to kind of dip my toe into thewater.
Hashtag one person frameworkyeah exactly If you would have
asked me what I thought I wouldspend this year doing.
I don't think I would havelistened most of the things that
I've done and really enjoyeddoing.
So sometimes you just neverknow and just have to put
(26:45):
yourself out there and see, Putyourself out there.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Roll with the opportunities.
You never know where it's goingto take you Exactly.
Very cool.
Well, hopefully we'll have youback on after MicroConf and you
can tell us whether or not yourblocker has been solved and if
you've started to find yourniche or if you've figured
something out new that you wantto share with the world.
Thank you for coming on.
Where can people find you onthe internet to keep up with all
(27:09):
the cool things you're workingon?
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The easiest way is to find me at CodyNormancomcom.
That has all of the links forall the different social
platforms, so whenever theyinevitably turn, they'll be
updated their turn, change theirname rebrand completely.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know, the source of truth is Cody Normancom.
Cody, thanks for coming on theshow today and we'll talk to you
again soon.
Thanks, drew.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
Code and the Coding Coders whoCode it.
I'm your host, drew Bragg, andI'm joined today by my friend,
cody Norman.
Cody, for anyone who hasn't hadthe pleasure of meeting you yet
, would you please do a quickintroduction?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Sure, my name is Cody Norman.
I'm an independent Ruby onRails consultant and live in a
small mountain town here inColorado.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Fantastic, and you've also spoken at a few
conferences.
You also are running your ownlittle.
What would you call it?
A company, a SaaS product?
What is the proper term forSpotSquid?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's definitely a SaaS.
I've heard the term micro SaaSthrown around.
Maybe that's closer, justbecause right now it's not
taking up all of my time, butfor some reason I keep finding
myself gravitating back totrying to make tools and
software stuff for tattooartists and shops.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It's such a cool thing and I think we'll get into
that a little bit For anyonenew to the show.
The way this is going to work.
I'm going to ask Cody threequestions.
I'm going to ask him what he'sworking on, what kind of
blockers he has.
If he doesn't have a currentblocker, he can talk about a
recent blocker he had, how hewent about solving it.
And then I'm going to ask himto tell us something cool, new
or interesting that he'srecently learned or discovered
or even built.
(01:12):
It doesn't have to be codingrelated, but this is code and
the code encoders who code it,so it absolutely can be.
All that being said, cody, whatare you working?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
on.
Right now I'm working on a fewdifferent client projects.
I've also been spending moretime with SpotSquid.
I've started getting a littlemore traction mainly with my
actual tattoo artists, so now Ikind of have the rare
opportunity to dog food it onboth ends.
So I get to run it on the shopside to help them out, but also
(01:42):
get to use it as a client too.
Perfect, that's the best ofboth them out, but also get to
use it as a client too.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Perfect.
That's the best of both worlds,right?
You get to see how your app ishandling both sides of the
interaction when you're tryingto get SpotSquid out to more
artists.
Is it just word of mouth thatyou're hoping for, or do you
have a strategy?
Or is it because it's a microSaaS, it's just for you and your
current tattoo artist, andbecause it's a micro SaaS, it's
just for you and your currenttattoo artist and maybe it'll go
(02:07):
?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
from there.
One thing I've been figuringout is I feel like my best
channel for traction is going tobe referrals and word of mouth
from other artists.
Most shops are kind of hesitantabout doing anything new.
I think a lot of that's becausethere's still a lot of the like
apprentice and craftsmen andearn your dues type of thing,
and a lot of these people havebeen practicing their craft for
(02:31):
10, 20 plus years and they don'thave new frameworks and
languages to learn every twoyears, so they're very hesitant
to change.
But honestly, for probably thefirst couple of years of trying
all this out, most of mycustomer research was like while
I was being tattooed, kind ofsetting that as the baseline.
It makes it a little bit easieronce I have something that I
(02:51):
think can help them out a littlebetter.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Cool, and it just occurred to me that, because you
and I have spoken aboutSpotSquid a few times, I might
have more knowledge than youraverage listener.
Can you give a brief overviewof what SpotSquid is?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
knowledge than your average listener.
Can you give a brief overviewof what SpotSquid is?
The best explanation is it is asoftware application to help
tattoo shops manage businessoperations.
And that's kind of purposelyvague, mostly because I'm trying
to talk to the customers asmuch as possible and figure out
their biggest pain points, totry to deliver a painkiller
instead of a vitamin.
(03:25):
So I've been doing more thingsmanually, testing out a lot of
stuff, these quick experiments,to get feedback.
So it's something where I'm notexactly sure how to explain it,
but I do have some ways that Iknow that I've been helping
shops and helping clients andsmooth out a whole old and
traditionally paper process.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Sounds like a lot of fun too, especially just the
thought of being able to go inget tattooed.
While you're getting tattooed,you're talking to the artists
about what problems they have,and then you're going home and
building a solution for thatproblem.
It almost sounds like theperfect world for a software
developer.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I've worked at a ton of startups over the years and
built a lot of things, but thebiggest thing that I'm noticing
that's making the differencewith this is I've never really
worked on something where Ireally love the customers, so I
really love hanging out intattoo shops and working with
them and trying to help them dowhat they do best more, so not
(04:21):
have to worry about the otherstuff, and I think that's made a
really big difference as far astrying to get feedback and
trying to get a solution thatworks for them instead of
something that I think wouldwork as a developer.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
In addition to other cool things that you've been
working on.
You recently spoke at RockyMountain, Ruby.
What was your topic?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I spoke on Action Mailbox Awesome.
This was the same talk that Igave at RailsConf.
I've given the similar talk ata couple other meetups
throughout the year, but thiswas the only other conference
that I've spoke at and really mysecond conference ever.
I just kind of got into thespeaking thing earlier this year
, so it was nice to kind of havetwo, and there's not much close
(05:03):
to Bailey, but Boulder is aboutas close as it gets.
It really felt like a homecourt advantage for that.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I was super bummed to miss Rocky Mountain Ruby this
year.
Last year was an awesomeconference.
Boulder is such a cool town.
It's located in the heart ofeverything, super walkable town.
I know you did some cool stuffon lunch when I was there.
We actually climbed one of theflat irons on lunch because why
not?
It's right there.
It's such a cool conference.
Other than your talk, which Iassume was the best talk of the
(05:33):
conference because I've seenyour talk before and it is
awesome what was your favoritetalk?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's really tough.
There was a lot of great talks.
I really enjoyed Marco's talk,mostly because it reminds me of
all the things that I should beusing with Hotwire and all the
tooling and stuff that are outthere that I tend to forget
about until I'm doing the exactsame things that he mentions.
That it can prevent, like notremembering how to name my
controllers or the actions orsomething like that, and that
(06:01):
was probably the most relatablefor something that I could take
away and start integrating intomy day-to-day.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So for preparation for your talk, you deployed a
Rails 8 application with all thedefaults using Hatchbox.
So you didn't use Kamal, youused Hatchbox, which props
probably would be my approach to.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But what was it like to deploy a pretty much Rails
new standard and overall itworked out pretty well and one
(06:47):
of the things that I noticed, Ithink, this type of setup where
it's all SQLite and all runningon the app, especially for this
particular demo app.
We didn't really have any viewsor any other stuff that it had
to deal with and the one thingthat I noticed is it just felt
so fast because it's writing tothe file and processing the jobs
(07:07):
and so Solid Q SQLite, seeingall those put together and
seeing how it works on adecently provisioned server.
I think it was like a two gigDigitalOcean box with nothing
else running on it, all SQLiteand processing all the emails,
storing storage on the disk,which is the first time that
I've done.
Typically it doesn't work toowell with ActionFox stuff, but
(07:30):
wanted to try it.
It seemed like it worked and itwas a really cool experience
and I shipped it on Friday and Ijust kept cramming things in
there to see how much I couldget and was able to get a few
different examples as well as acouple of hidden Easter eggs
within the email set.
No one discovered, but maybenext time.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
The fun of Easter eggs is always making the Easter
eggs more than waiting for themto be found, because sometimes
they're not.
That's cool.
In all of the things thatyou're working on, what kind of
blockers have you been runninginto?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The biggest blocker I've been running into is trying
to figure out my niche.
Where am I the most useful andthe most happy and the overlap
of the most productive things?
I can work on?
Doing the consulting stuff.
That's been interesting, andI've been building other
people's apps for 10 plus yearsnow, which is fun, but I feel
(08:25):
like I tend to do my best workand have the best results for
things that I work on myself.
I don't think that'snecessarily saying that I'm
better.
I think, if anything, it mayjust be the fact of being able
to make a decision, whether it'sthe right one or not, and just
move on really quickly, which Ithink helps refine and lead into
(08:47):
other fun things.
So trying to figure out how Ican do more of that, how that
can be viable and sustainableand still be able to make a
living and be successful.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Well, it sounds like you're on your way to being the
action mailbox guy, becauseyou've done the two talks now
and I've seen one of them, and Iknow from at least that one
that you definitely have yourknowledge on that topic down
more than most of us who haveonly dabbled with it, and you've
also recently published acourse on it, right, yes, and
how is that going?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
so far it's been going pretty well.
It was definitely something newfor me and learned a lot.
I think one of the biggesttakeaways I had was, as I was
about to publish it, I've done ahandful of YouTube videos to
kind of get my feet wet, butrealizing that course videos
should probably be a lotdifferent than YouTube videos
Because everyone kind of hasmore context, you don't have to
(09:40):
explain or hold people's handsas much.
They should probably be a lotshorter.
People normally watch them inbatches.
So trying to figure outbasically how I would like to
take a course and instructionand everything that way, so
trying to cut down everything asmuch as possible to get really
focused and not a lot of fluffto meet like a certain time
(10:00):
limit or something.
So that was really interesting.
And then also the other thing Ienjoyed was digging in deeper
to testing and how I can setthings up in a development
environment and figured out afew easy, quick ways to use the
Ruby Mail Jam to create all thestuff that I need, especially if
there's like specific headersor reply tos or things like that
(10:24):
, and then write those to a filethat I can just copy and paste
and paste directly in the Railsconductor source thing, so I
don't have to try to send myselflive emails back and forth and
pull the raw source from there.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I have always shied away from any kind of email
testing because I think what youwere alluding to it kind of is
a pain in the ass.
You're doing a lot of manualwork.
I hadn't thought to use theRuby Mail Gem.
That sounds like a whole othercourse.
Maybe that's your niche.
You just got to start rollingout these courses of like I'm
going to solve all of your emailwoes in Rails, because there's
(10:59):
a lot of them.
There's a lot of email woes.
But is that a viable niche?
Do you think for you you couldpull a Jason Sweat?
Jason Sweat is a fantasticRails developer.
He's a good, solid consultant,but then people in our community
know him as the testing guy.
Is that something that youthink you're looking for?
Where you're like I'm a solidconsultant and I'd continue to
(11:22):
do my consulting to pay thebills.
But also in the community I'mCody the action mailbox guy or
the email guy.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, that's an interesting question and
something I've been thinkingabout.
And, like anything, skills andknowledge can atrophy pretty
quickly.
So I think, because I wrote ablog post and then I gave a talk
and then I gave more talks,I've been pretty consistently
doing stuff with action mailboxover the past few months or so
and I know that whenever I domove to something after about
(11:51):
six months or so, I've alreadyhad to re-consult my own blogs
several times about how to dostuff.
So I think a lot of this isjust trying to document
everything that I have and I'velearned before I forget it.
And because I'm talking aboutit, people are also asking me
more questions.
So now I know what people arecurious about and I could kind
(12:12):
of work that in.
So it gets a little bit easierto start sharing information on
that.
As far as whether it's viable, Idon't think so.
I think it's something that isprobably pretty easy for a team
to pick up.
If you've worked with ActiveJobbefore, then you can get spun
up on processing inbound emailspretty quickly.
I think, if anything, it's agood example of showing how I
(12:35):
can pick apart and learn stuffand try to relay information to
other people and take somethingthat sounds kind of bland and
try to convince people to watchtwo plus hours of videos on
parsing inbound email Sure.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Okay, that makes sense.
I haven't had the pleasure ofdoing inbound email stuff too
much.
My last job we didn't have aprocess but we weren't on Action
Mailbox.
It was something that we werelooking at, potentially moving
to, and if I had seen your talkslash, had access to your course
prior to leaving there, I mighthave used it as the springboard
(13:12):
to actually get that projectdone or suggest it to someone
because it would have solved thehomegrown headache that we had.
But it makes sense that it'spotentially not something that
you're going to market yourselfas the email guy.
For the whole blockers thing,was you talking about how to
figure out what you are in theindustry, carve out your niche?
(13:34):
I mean, where do you see beinga jack of all trades, master of
none, as being a blocker?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
The way it kind of acts as a blocker is it attracts
certain types of work that'sprobably closer to like
commodity work Just tradinghourly time to fix this thing,
submit the invoice and move on,so not really having a chance to
invest in building a product,refining stuff, which are things
that I really enjoy and I thinkI'm pretty good at.
(14:03):
Prior to my development life, Iworked in sales and used to
work in the mortgage industryand made 100 plus calls a day,
so reaching out to people andtalking to them about stuff
isn't super foreign to me, and Iknow that that can be to a lot
of developers.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, so you're hoping to find a little bit more
of a way to be involved inprojects, rather than the guy
that they're just like hey, weneed X done.
Please go do it.
Come back to us when you'redone.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Right, and with that I think, having several smaller
clients and working on a lot ofdifferent projects, there's
always a deadline soon.
Someone always needs something,so that's always a little bit
difficult, especially withconferences and speaking
engagements and things like thatcoming up.
It kind of requires me toshoehorn in those interesting
(14:52):
opportunities in betweenwherever I can get to that
client.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right.
If only we didn't have bills topay.
It's always interesting to meto talk to consultants whether
it be like someone who works forThoughtBot or for TestDouble or
for Evil Martians versus whatI've always done in my career
and that is work for a companythat has a product and I work on
said product.
It's always interesting to hearthe different types of
(15:20):
struggles and the differentapproaches to work, because in
some ways what you do soundsvery appealing to me.
I get to work on something newvery frequently.
Everything's kind of new andfresh and I'm always learning
something because I'm working onthe next thing.
But then when I hear you orJeremy Smith or whoever talk
about the work, it does kind ofsound like man.
(15:40):
It would be so nice to be ableto latch onto a product and help
it grow, not just from a go,build it, but having actual
input.
So I'm always interested abouthearing about those particular
challenges.
So what is something new, coolor interesting that you've
recently learned or discoveredor built?
(16:01):
And it doesn't have to becoding related, because I know
you do a lot of stuff that isn'tcoding also, but what is
something that would fall intothat category?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, I think the Rails beta app that I deployed
for Rocky Mountain Ruby.
That's pretty cool and hadgoing to spin up a Rails 8 app
for toy demo, for fun app.
What is your key takeaway?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
or takeaways even.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I think one of the biggest takeaways is maybe
not for every application, but Idefinitely feel more
comfortable using SQLite formultiple databases in something
that maybe not production.
It's not like it's making money, but I did put up live email
addresses in front of a liveaudience for them to email and
no one shook their fist at me,so I think they all made it
(17:03):
there and that was fascinatingto see.
It looked like everythingprocessed really quick.
Also, playing around with someof the action mailbox stuff, one
of the patterns I think isreally helpful is like an
informational mailbox.
So like you email food atwhatevercom or coffee and then I
would send back a list ofoptions walkable within 10
minutes of the venue.
(17:24):
Things like that are reallyeasy and they all seem to
process really quickly.
The other thing that was reallynice was because I'm only
replying back to email addressesthat I received.
I had a 0% bounce rate forthese emails and also didn't
require anyone to sign up orconfirm or anything like that.
(17:45):
They were just able to send anemail and get some use out of it
.
Some of them were unwillinglyentered into the Easter egg
contest, which no one found, butfor those two informational
mailboxes.
The reply to address was set togo to the special inbox where
the first one who would reply tothe email got sent back a gift
(18:06):
card for a local spot close tothe area.
So that's a great idea beingable to set up and facilitate
that kind of stuff withoutrequiring user accounts for,
like a quick short event likeconference or startup week,
something like that.
That was a lot of fun.
And using SQLite, everythingwas pretty fast and performant.
And with Action Mailbox, mostof these emails are set to be
(18:28):
incinerated or deleted within 30days anyway, so I don't have to
worry about syncing or a lot ofthe other issues, and I think
it was a great use case forsomething time-boxed and really
focused for like a specific task.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, that is a cool and interesting use case of that
technology.
I hadn't thought aboutsomething like that, but now you
got the wheels turning in myhead about all the cool things
you could potentially do withAction Mailbox and I'm not going
to try.
And on the wheels turning in myhead about all the cool things
you could potentially do withaction mailbox and I'm not going
to try.
And on air, have my littleexploratory, I will have to play
.
When you chose to deploy withhatchbox versus kamal 2, as the
(19:08):
case is, was that a hey, I'mdoing enough rails 8 and rails 8
defaults, like I'll stick withsomething I know.
Or was there a specificconstraint that was like
Hatchbox is going to make thisbetter or easier than Kamal?
Or was it just like I can'ttackle learning another new
thing right now?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We're going to stick with tried and true that was
pretty much it Basically justtrying to bite off new
technologies and new learningsin digestible chunks, so if
something was going wrong, Iwould have a pretty reasonable
idea where it would be.
I've deployed a lot of apps onHatchbox for a few years now.
I'm very happy, and that seemedlike a good kind of way to
(19:47):
split the learning into adigestible chunk where I could
also get it done in time too,because this was something that
it's like maybe I can make thislive and I was able to deploy it
Friday afternoon and then Ithink I got the actual email
account connected and approvedSunday night.
So all of it was pretty lastminute.
(20:08):
So anything for speedy deployswas a big help.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, I also assume you run into issues with Kamal.
You're kind of stuck with maybea GitHub repo of putting an
issue out there and at leastwith Hatchbox, shout out to
Hatchbox's support team.
You can actually talk tosomeone to solve your problem if
it got to that level.
So I can understand thatExactly.
Somehow we've ripped throughall three questions.
(20:33):
Is there anything else youwanted to talk about, anything
you want to revisit, because wecan talk for longer?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
you see talks.
I don't have any moreconferences or talks lined up.
Are you going to ruby conf?
It's in november and I saw somepictures of myself at rocky
mountain ruby.
I was like, oh my god, I lookso high that's fair.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Chicago's a trip for you coming out of colorado, so
that is fair.
Will you be at the lastRailsConf?
I'm pretty sure I will.
(21:11):
I saw it was going to be thereception.
You're pretty much the firstother person I've talked to
about the July date, becausewhen I first heard July, I was
like July, no one does aconference in July.
And I was like actually, that'sgenius, you're not conflicting.
I couldn't go to Rocky Mountain, ruby, because I went to
Railsworld.
I've had to pick and choosecertain other ones because it
(21:33):
was a little too close toanother conference I was already
speaking at or committed togoing to, and I couldn't go to
Blue Ridge or I couldn't go to,like I said, rocky Mountain.
So having it in July, whenthere's just nothing around and
people are already taking a lotof time off during that time, so
maybe they can shoehorn it intoa vacation where they take the
family it's almost genius.
(21:54):
I hope that's how most peoplefeel about it.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, I think it's great.
I've been considering attendinga micro comp sometime soon.
I've spoke to a lot of people,a lot of Rails people who have
been to those in the past, butthey've always been pretty close
to Rails comp, usually likewithin a couple weeks or so.
So for that same reason it wasalways tough for me to make it.
So maybe this year that'ssomething that I can work into
(22:17):
the schedule and still be ableto make RailsConf.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Are you going to continue to submit the Action
Mailbox talk to conferences tokeep giving it?
Are you going to try to doanother talk or is talking
taking a backseat for a littlebit?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I'm not sure I really enjoy doing it and I love
having people come up to meafterwards and tell me about
things that they have ideas tobuild now, so I think that's
great.
As far as like submitting it, Idon't know if I'll continue to
submit it.
If I do, it would be somewherelike tropical or somewhere in
Europe, like not anywhere in theUS.
(22:52):
But if nothing else, I think Iwill probably just keep it
around for meetup organizers tobe able to hop in for them,
because at this point I don'tneed much notice, can typically
give the talk pretty quickly and, yeah, help out meetup
organizers that may be shortspeaker or need someone to fill
in for a month.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So Action Mailbox kind of your thing came from
your own learnings, sort ofself-documenting as a blog post
turned it into a talk.
If you had to guess, either bysaying this is something that
I've recently learned about thatI think I have enough wisdom to
part on others, or I want tolearn enough that I could
potentially have enough contentfor a talk what do you think the
(23:31):
next potential talk level topicwould be?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
That's a good question and I don't think I
have an answer for it right now.
Perfectly reasonable answer,because one of the things that I
kind of realized and shout outto Kevin Murphy for giving this
advice but being able to makethe talk personal in some way
just makes a huge difference asfar as delivering it and feeling
more comfortable, and I thinkthat is something super
(23:57):
important that I'll probablykeep in mind now, instead of
just looking for topics thatpeople may be interested in,
trying to figure out ways that Ican, you know, relate it to me,
which is really hard to dountil you've kind of given the
talk once or twice.
But the one thing that I'velearned is being able to kind of
make things personal and giveyour own spin on things seems to
(24:19):
help it go over a little biteasier.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, and come up with cool demo videos of you
sending an email to start yourtruck at the end, which was
still probably the coolestending to a talk I have ever
seen.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was so happy I didn't tell anyone about that
ahead of time.
I had reminders in my phone andeverything like don't just say
it, don't tell anyone, but I'mglad you were able to pop in for
that, and getting to see peoplereact to that in person was
something I didn't really thinkabout, but it's been amazing.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
It's cool because it's one of those hey look, this
is a cool thing you can do.
You would never do this, no onewould do that.
But at the same time, seeing ithappen gives you this feeling
of empowerment, of like, oh shit, if you can start a truck with
an email, I can do anything withan email.
The sky is the limit.
I am limited by my imaginationonly to do this.
(25:14):
I think that's what's so coolabout it is it's this ridiculous
.
I would never do this.
But at the same time, look atall the things you could do if
you can imagine it.
I love it and I will second yourshout out to Kevin Murphy.
Having him watch your talk andgive feedback is such a gift
because he is a solid, solidspeaker and is a wealth of
(25:34):
knowledge on making talkspersonal and making them great
and making them engaging.
And my talks would be half asgood if I didn't have him giving
me feedback.
Second, your shout out Cool.
Well, I'm bummed I won't seeyou in RubyConf in Chicago, but
I'm pumped to see you atRailsConf in July and hopefully
(25:55):
somewhere in between.
But I'm pumped to see you atRailsConf in July and hopefully
somewhere in between.
But who knows, we'll see.
I definitely won't be at aMicroConf, because that's not
what I do.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Right, yeah, and that's still out there.
But yeah, for the first timethat it's kind of on the table
and think it might line up wellwith where I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, that's exciting and it sounds like a good way
of potentially solving yourblocker, of finding that niche
right, Like that's sort of whatmicroconf is is like it's people
who run micro businesses.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
There always seem to be a pretty good rails
contingent there, which so Ithink that would be an easy way
to kind of dip my toe into thewater.
Hashtag one person frameworkyeah exactly If you would have
asked me what I thought I wouldspend this year doing.
I don't think I would havelistened most of the things that
I've done and really enjoyeddoing.
So sometimes you just neverknow and just have to put
(26:45):
yourself out there and see, Putyourself out there.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Roll with the opportunities.
You never know where it's goingto take you Exactly.
Very cool.
Well, hopefully we'll have youback on after MicroConf and you
can tell us whether or not yourblocker has been solved and if
you've started to find yourniche or if you've figured
something out new that you wantto share with the world.
Thank you for coming on.
Where can people find you onthe internet to keep up with all
(27:09):
the cool things you're workingon?
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The easiest way is to find me at CodyNormancomcom.
That has all of the links forall the different social
platforms, so whenever theyinevitably turn, they'll be
updated their turn, change theirname rebrand completely.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know, the source of truth is Cody Normancom.
Cody, thanks for coming on theshow today and we'll talk to you
again soon.
Thanks, drew.
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