Supper Club × Is No Code going to take our jobs? with Connor Finlayson

Welcome to Syntax, the podcast. With the tastiest web Well, the treats out there today, we've got a supper club for you. This is the episode where we bring somebody on and talk to them about kind of the space they're in and their head space and All kinds of stuff. We've got Connor today, who is gonna talk to us about no code.

Is is no code gonna take our jobs? Is it just a toy? Us real developers need to use no code, all of that kind of stuff.

I'm really excited about it. We're sponsored today by 3 awesome companies. 1st 1, Postlight Podcast, your weekly source for honest conversations on tech leadership and business.

SeedProd, they're a no code, builder for WordPress.

And Strapi, they a leading open source CMS, 100% JavaScript, Extensible and fully customizable.

We'll talk about all of them partway through the episode.

Welcome, Connor. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. We should we should get this out of Connor. Your last name, fin Finlayson.

Is that how you pronounce it? Yep. Finlayson. Yep. Finlayson. Okay. Cool. We we here are not exactly experts in

pronunciation. We're the opposite what's the opposite of an expert?

Yeah.

We're a couple of dunces when it comes to, so, it's always good to get that out of the way. Basically, do you wanna tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, generally, what your interests are and and just, yeah, just a little bit about yourself.

I'm originally from New Zealand, as you might be able to tell. But I recently moved to Canada.

I yeah. I now live in Ottawa.

Oh, right on. I've got a job with the Canadian government, so here we are. Oh, yeah? Yeah. My background. So I, run a website called Unicorn Factory, which is a kind of like a Fiverr slash Upwork for freelancers in New Zealand.

I started working on that about 3 years ago, and, yeah, I've been doing it ever since. I'm still doing it remotely from Canada now. I've also started setting up a Canadian version of the Unicorn Oh. Yeah. And I created the entire thing using no code tools, which I think we'll be talking about today.

I also run a little YouTube channel, where I basically give away all of my secrets on how to build little things with no code tools.

And, yeah, in a nutshell, that pretty much sums up what I do with most of my time. Awesome. How long have you been in Canada for? I've been here for about A year and a half, maybe a little bit longer. Yeah. So we had our lockdown in New Zealand, when the pandemic started. The second that ended, we packed up our bags, and we moved to Canada.

Wow. Wow. And how was your first Winter then, I assume you don't get a whole lot of snow in New Zealand? We don't at all. Well,

you know, the winter was What I kind of expected it to be, a lot of time indoors and very cold.

Luckily, before I left, someone Ted, look. When you move to Canada, the first thing that you should do is just buy a really expensive jacket. You won't regret it. Don't Yeah. Cheap out on the jacket.

And So that was so yeah. It was fine. This winter was, way colder than the 1st winter.

So Oh, yeah. But overall, I mean, it's It's different, but I like it. You know? It's,

you know? You've moved to, like, one of the coldest cities in Canada too. Ottawa is Brutal in the winter, like like, so cold. I'm glad you got a good coat because, like, it's funny. You see Canadians walking around with these, like, $1,000 coats, And you're like, why? Is everybody rich? It's like, no. Everyone's not stupid, and they're just what a good going on?

Exactly. Yeah.

You know, it's funny. We we end up Wes is from Toronto and well, Toronto area. G g Yeah. They call it the GTA.

Is that what they call a glass? Yeah. Yeah. I I lived in Toronto for 8 years, and now I've lived in Hamilton for 8 years. So I'm just about past that Point where I can say I'm from Toronto, and now I'm from Hamilton.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I know. And so we end up having we have a big Canadian listenership, because the West West has brought all of his Canadians along.

Yeah. So nice.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, let's let's get on into it. No code.

Do you wanna explain what that is real quick to the audience, and then we'll sorta dive into it?

Yeah. So No Code Tools, basically software that I think was primarily designed for people who Don't come from a coding background to build simple things like websites. And over the last few years, it's kind of evolved into a whole bunch of different tools that you can use for different use cases. So, I think, like, one of the, the main examples that a lot of people probably know is Zapier, Which allows you to set up automation workflows in a nice, noncoder friendly interface.

Webflow is a big tool that's come out that basically allows you to build websites. And then there also a whole bunch of other tools that have Come out over the last few years. It's so very specific use cases that you would typically need developers for.

And so yeah.

I kind of got started in the no code world, when so I come originally from a marketing background, and I needed to figure out how to build landing pages for the startup that I was working in at the time.

And, I tried WordPress, which didn't quite work for me. I signed up to Codecademy, which, was cool, but I just didn't really get the hang of it. And then, and then I, I, by pure chance, stumbled across Webflow, which Kind of started my journey into the no co world. And so, you know, how Webflow differs from tools like Squarespace all works is that you're actually visually writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

So instead of randomly dragging and dropping together things, what you can actually do is, build out your site on a canvas, but you can't Just drag and drop things. You have to follow HTML, CSS, and JavaScript rules. And one of the cool things about it is once you've once you're done building your site, You can actually export the code and then hand it off to a developer, and then they can continue working with the code that you visually created.

And, When I was exploring all these different tools, that's really what sold it to me. I was working in a startup at the time with 2 developers, and They said to me, you can try and build the website that no no drag and drop tools.

No nasty code.

And so, I think at the time, Webflow was pretty new. And, I thought it would be funny by just, like, building the site, then I saw that you could export the code. And then instead of just giving them the Webflow site, I I actually gave them the code that I created in Windflow, and they couldn't quite figure out how I did it until I ended up telling them. And so That that really sold the dream for me. And so, yes, since then, I've just been exploring a whole bunch of different tools to do a whole bunch of different fun things with. No cartoons. Yeah. You know, it's it's funny to hear that reaction from your developers because we, as developers, we've we've run the gamut on, like, promised

Style of drag and drop tools for so long that have always kind of ruined our lives a little bit. So, like, to give you some background, I think maybe the first program That I used to build websites with was oh, is Adobe's before they had purchased Macromedia, they had their own Web design app or web development app. It was it's live something. I don't I forget. It had a butterfly was their their whole thing. And they had this whole Canvas where you could you just drag the grid, and then you could just throw whatever you want on the grid. And and it looked really great in the app, but then whenever I loaded it up, I I was like, I was, you know, a teenager and firing this thing up and then now exploring being like, oh, boy. This doesn't look anything like it does in the in the app. Then, of course and then, yeah, then I moved on to to Dreamweaver and then eventually, graduated into some of these other tools. But they had these these, Drag and drop tools for so long have had such a a negative, impression on developers. I think we all just, Wrote them off a little bit now, and here we are in the year 2022, and I think some of this stuff has evolved considerably.

I mean, to be honest, after having used, Webflow, for a while, I can completely understand why developers don't wanna have to deal with the code that is generated by a lot of these drag and drop Tools because it's unmaintainable.

And that was something that I didn't understand at the time.

But, Yeah. Some of these newer no code tools are really visual coding in a way. And then the at the time, I didn't really understand it. I didn't even really appreciate it, for example. But nowadays, I'm a stickler for good class naming conventions, and Yeah. I understand how to Structure aside properly, and it's given me, like, a a a way better appreciation of the process of actually writing code By learning how all of these different tools work. Nice. Yeah. That that's that's it's interesting.

I think, like Scott says, we all He either wrote it off because we've had a bad experience or because the promise of these things for so long has always been disappointing.

Like, I remember, we had grid. Io. This is, like, 5 or 6 years ago where they this was more of a AI, of building websites Where you would just, like, tell it what you want, and it would just generate a beautiful website for you and that flopped. And, I think there's there's some of that, and then there's also a lot of people that I think a little bit, scared of the next generation of building websites where, these tools actually will get Good enough to be able to help us, and maybe it is even better to to go ahead and and build websites in these tools. And I think a lot of people are sort of against that because it means that their job is is gonna sort of go away. Like, I specifically look at The difference between, like, I I call them pamphlet websites, a WordPress website. You normally charge somebody $2,000, $3,000 for a website.

A lot of a lot of I find myself telling my friends that come to me, hey. I want a website. I'm like, just go Squarespace or just go to one of these types of things because Mhmm. It's a little bit more maintainable, and I think we're we're starting to move into that that area.

I think I have a question. Do you think that eventually no code is going to replace us all? Are we gonna be out without a job In 5, 10 years from now.

I I think probably the opposite.

So, like, I understand where I understand where the idea of that comes from. And I think that there are probably a lot of use cases now where developers are probably losing aspects of jobs. For example, building simple Pamphlet websites or setting up really simple automations. But what I've actually found is that it's actually probably Created more opportunities for developers than it has taken from them.

You know, just because With a lot of these no code tools, it's quite easy to bring on developers to take what you're doing further than you could do yourself.

So a lot of the times, you know, you can get it to about 80%.

And then, in order for you to enhance it, you work with a developer. And so, with the projects that I've worked on, I've hired a lot of JavaScript developers who've worked in some of the local tools to kind of Build out more advanced workflows, all those types of things. So that's just directly in the space. In terms of the opportunities that Norco creates for new solutions, it's just a whole new ball game, really. Like, the amount of no code tools that are spinning up these days that address very specific use cases that basically become visual abstractions for certain coding languages that don't exist now is huge. And I think that, as more people enter the Face, as you see more people learning how to build basic pamphlet websites, setting up basic automations, you'll find that the need for Software development will increase over time. More opportunities will be created, so I think it will grow. Yeah. Yeah. I I think the same thing as well. I Especially during the pandemic, what we saw was,

okay, I have a very simple pamphlet website, But now we need to do something a little bit more complicated. I need to let people book time slots so that they can come pick up their groceries or Something like that. And then you say, okay. Well, as the that initial bar gets really low to just getting online and building a website, Now people are starting to build more and more complex stuff, and I I think the same thing goes for AI in in coding as well where, we're not spending all of our time on this sort of simple stuff, Putting an image on there, compressing it, now we can we're freed up to work on much harder problems, and those things are a little bit easier because of the tools that we have.

Absolutely. I've actually seen a lot of SaaS companies, specifically in New Zealand because the circles I operate in, that have, moved a lot of their, like, marketing websites over to a tool like Webflow, which has freed up all of these resources for developers to work on the actual SaaS product, Well, yeah, means that, number 1, they can actually move faster on the marketing side of things because they're able to iterate a lot Faster on their marketing sites without actually having to take up dev time all of the time.

Plus, now you see that, you know, the Probably the time of all of the developers are used a lot more effectively. So yeah. And that that tracks totally with like, everything that I've seen when I worked in an Everything that I've seen when I worked in an agency, you spent so long building out the same old Drupal functionality over and over again just to get somebody Access to be able to update the marketing page in an easy way or or make make modifications to it that are are meaningful For the marketers, right, they can be a little bit now closer to the whole process rather than just being like, alright. I'm gonna type in a text box and have this Show up and and everything else that would actually go into affecting real marketing.

You know, I I can just I have to work with the designers and work with whoever to to get this thing implemented. Let's talk about one of our sponsors. It's another podcast.

It's a podcast with a bunch of people that I really respect.

So Postlight is a strategy design engineering firm, and their leaders, Rich Ziadi, Paul Ford, Gigi Cioppani, and Krystal Sacco. They host canter conversations on tech, business ethics, and culture.

Pretty cool. I've been a big fan of specifically Gina Trapani and, Paul Ford for, I don't know, probably 12 years now. I've I've been following their Stuff throughout the thing. I've I've talked with Gina on Twitter about Headless React and WordPress, a couple times, which is pretty cool. So big fan. I'm definitely gonna check out this podcast. I had no idea that they had were running this thing. So, sounds like a really good one. You wanna check it out, at postlight.comforward/podcast.

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Podcast for sponsoring. So you you mentioned a little bit of about tools. And and one thing that I think for me as a barrier into no code is that it seems like there's A lot of different tools, a lot of different, like, places to go to understand, maybe click this to this to this, whether it's Zapier, Things like air table or something. I was wondering, what are some of your favorite no code tools? And then I'll have a A follow-up about, like, how you find new tools, but, just in general, what what are some of your favorite tools for for building things? Yep. So,

When I created the Unicorn Factory, I started off with 3 main tools, which I probably would say are my favorite tools, to date. So number 1 Webflow, which I used to build the entire front end, then I use Airtable, which is basically my database tool.

So, because I'm using a whole bunch of different tools, I just need 1 data source that controls the flow of all information. I've just made the Yeah. Table there. Then, automation tool wise, there are a few. So, Zapier is the one that I started off with because it's really easy to learn if you're a complete beginner Automation, that type of stuff. But now I also use a tool called Make, which was formerly called Integromat, That allows you to do a whole bunch of additional things that are not super easy to do with Zapier. So, you know, Advanced workflows where you can do, like, if else statements, and you can even embed custom JavaScript to do certain things that you that they don't have custom built modules for.

Then there are other tools that have emerged out of those tools. So one of them is, Member Stack, which is clear plug in for Webflow sites that basically allows you to hide content on your Webflow sites, and that basically allows you to create membership sites, subscription based. And so those 4 tools were where I started off when I started my no code Journey, that allowed me to get the Unicorn factory up and running, and it allowed me to monetize it.

And since then, a whole bunch of other tools have kind of emerged that are in that I use quite regularly.

A lot of them are mostly add on tools to the main stack. So you've got, tools like Jetboost, which is a tool that allows you to do search and filtering on Webflow sites.

The yeah. And a whole bunch of tools like that. But then, a tool that I don't use a lot, but that is very popular in the no code space is Bubble, which is kind of like an all in one tool. So it's instead of you using multiple different tools, you just have everything in one thing. So you've got you can do build the front end In Bubble, you can set up all of your automation in Bubble. You've got a database in Bubble. And so those are probably the most popular tools Out there in the no code space right now. You you mentioned make. What what is, that's kind of a hard one to Google for. I was, like,

Firing up the Google machine when I was trying to search for that, I could not find .com.

Yeah. It's make.com.

Make.com? They got make.com? That's pretty awesome.

Yeah. That that should show you how much money there is in this no code space if they can gear out those domains. A lot a lot of these different links, they would say, like, you know,

you know, 10,000,000,000 users on this platform or whatever. You're just, like, looking at this, like, well, this is a whole world,

And and no wonder we get so many questions about it. So yeah. Wow. I wanna ask about, like, when you need to duck out into into a real JavaScript. You you mentioned sometimes you do need to add a little bit of JavaScript. And, specifically, I I had a call with who is it? Was it who has the tool called Velo? Velo.

What Wix. Wix. So Wix had a tool, unfortunately, named Corvid.

Jeez.

Oh, jeez. I did not know about that. They had a call with me. They're like, hey. You wanna do a video Go on. It's called Corvid. I know. We're changing it.

So is there Corvid version 19 is just released. Corvid 19.

Oh, that sucks.

But so they renamed it to Velo, and, essentially, what it is is it's Serverless functions for Wix.

And I thought that was kinda interesting that, at a certain point, you do need to duck out. So when do you find yourselves Limited by what you can do in a NoCo tool. And when do you find yourself having to actually write,

like, a little bit of JavaScript here and there? Mhmm. So I, use a lot of JavaScript for my workflows, my automation. So probably about a year ago, Airtable released, A feature called Airtable script. And, basically, what it allows you to do is to write custom JavaScript scripts Inside of your air table base. And for me, at the time, I knew nothing about coding at all. And, it seemed seemed like a pretty big deal at the time, so, I spent a bit of time learning a little bit about how to write scripts. They had a lot of great examples.

And as soon as I got the hang of it, I actually realized that you can actually replace a lot of the automation tools that I'm using by just writing out JavaScript inside of Airtable scripts.

And so that is how I've started replacing some of my, automation that sit in NoCo tools with actual JavaScript.

Yeah. It obviously still sits inside of the air table. So we kind of look at it more as low code because you don't need to, like, Spin up like servers. I don't even I don't even really know anything about it, so I don't Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But you can just write out JavaScript in there. You can connect it with whatever APIs you want and, basically allows you to do, what, You know, what you typically do with automation tools, but the cool thing about it as well is that when you're using no code tools, you are limited to the interface that has been created. And oftentimes, there are a lot of integrations that, these automation tools don't have. Or, for example, their functionality like if else statements that don't exist inside of these automation tools.

And so With scripts, as soon as you start getting the hang of it, you can solve for use cases that those automation tools currently don't solve for, and that is, what's really cool about it another thing where code comes into play is Webflow. So there are a lot of people who use custom, Scripts inside of Webflow to do things that you can't actually do inside of the Webflow interface. So you've got a lot of tutorials on, like, jQuery on how to create certain Animations or how to display certain types of things. And so, there's definitely like an intersection between people using these no code tools. But then, when they hit Barriers using code to break through those barriers and getting it beyond the 80% that those no code tools can get you? That's really it's all really fascinating. I think the thing that, to me, that Stood out the most was you're talking about how,

you don't really even know how some of those things work in terms of, like, spinning up a server or whatever. And to me, that's The but the best part about it all, because, honestly, there are so many things in web development that I wish I didn't know how it worked because It's just like just some it's I'm spending, you know, hours on something that is really not necessarily making my life any easier. It's just I'm doing it because I have to do it. Right. It's just Mhmm. It's just something I gotta check off. I gotta spend all this time, preparing, you know, my my code base to work in a specific way when I wish I just didn't have to. I'm wondering about so there is a lot of tools here. I'm wondering about how you find, some of your favorite tools. Like, what it like, if you what kind of resources are out there for somebody who's interested in, like, just seeing what's available in no code? Like, is there a resource that you you you typically, like a aggregation, site or something that Cheers, no code tools, or anything like that? Or or or is this just things that you find from your own research here and there? Yeah. So I have come across All of my,

the NoCo tools that I use mostly out of necessity, and the fact that each of the tools have really good, Communities that share things with each other. And so when I discovered Zapier, that came as a result of me spending a lot of time in the Webflow community and someone putting out a little Corey all being like, hey, look. I managed to automate form submissions.

And then everyone kind of like wasn't like, wow. What is this? But there are definitely resources out there. So, there's a company called Makerpad, that basically creates no code tutorials with all of the different tools that I out there, that's a really great starting place for anyone because, instead of just you learning about the tools, you can actually kinda pick projects to work on, And then they'll talk you through what the best tools are to use for a specific use case.

There are a lot of different YouTube channels out there now that talk about A whole bunch of different things, but I kinda feel the best starting point is always just, like, come up with a project that you wanna work on, pick 1 tool that you wanna start with, And then you will

get by default, you'll just stumble across what other people are doing to solve For certain use cases, and I think we we always recommend something really similar to learning different projects here too. It's just just pick a project and just try to make it.

And and you end up learning so much through the course of that that workflow that I think things open themselves up.

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Syntax.

I'm wondering, how do you handle things like you're in development mode and then you wanna push something to staging or production or, version control. If you accidentally delete something, your whole website goes down. Is are those ideas built into no code at all, the versioning and,

staging? No. No. We test in production. It's the wild wild west out here. Yeah. No. So, no. So That is, that is something that hasn't really been addressed yet. Now there are versions of it. So for example, with Webflow, you can push, your website to a staging domain and kind of make iterations and stuff like that. But, I think one of the issues is that a lot of these tools Haven't taken into consideration that they're gonna be used with a lot of different tools, and so there are issues with version control. So one Really specific example to kind of illustrate the problem is, say you're designing a website in Webflow, and, you realize that you've made a mistake and you wanna, you know, restore a backup that was, like, a few days ago. What it actually does is it changes all of the unique IDs of your CMS collection items, and that basically Can wreck all of your workflows in the other tools. Oh, yeah.

Because Webflow wasn't designed for that, and so it didn't factor that in.

So, yeah, there's pretty much no pissing in that sense.

Just kinda giving her. Yeah. We all we all work that way for a period of time, you know, in in especially in the WordPress and in Drupal worlds where you you were You were, like, basically editing files on the server live and refreshing, and you could bring the whole site down and stuff like that. It was yeah. Yeah. Things have changed a little bit in our world.

Is there a way to sort of back up your site as code because, like, I'm thinking about this in terms of, like, in the server space. A lot of people like to declare What their servers, how big they are, how many you have, where they live, they like to declare every single aspect of their Set up as, like, text. They call it, infrastructure as code. And and then what that allows you to do is that If something were to be nuked, you could quickly get that back to exactly how you had it without having to Click this box. Click that box. Select from here. Create a new one. It's just basically like all of that configuration, all of all the fields that we've created, that's Somewhere stored in a config file, does that is that, something that exists in the no code space as well? Or if if something were to get nuked, would you just have to go through

redoing everything? Yeah. So I don't think that there's a, like, a native solution to this Problem in any of the tools, or we don't really have config files in that sense, but there are ways that you can manage it. So for you can download all of your Airtable bases as CSV files, I suppose, you know, which so you can have backups like that. You can download the code base, you of your Webflow sites, there's no way to automatically do that right now. So you can't automatically back up Your, Webflow site says an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript file. You have to do it manually.

I think automation tools, That would be a problem.

So if, from one day or the other, Zapier did not work, then, Yeah. You would your Zeps like, your workflow would just not exist, so there's no way to, you know, copy it. But I do document a lot of it, so I think I could rebuild it reasonably fast. I think that if Webflow, Airtable, and Zapier Disappeared from one day to the other. Everything would be documented in a way that I do still think that I could get it up and running within a certain time frame, But definitely not immediately.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm I'm interested in a little bit about, like, native apps too. So we have web apps, or websites, brochure sites, is there a lot are is there a lot of overlap between the no code tools that build these These types of things as well as the no code tools that work directly with native applications, or is that something like a totally different world?

So just to clarify, by native applications, it means, like, building actual apps versus Yeah. Yeah. Like an iOS app or something.

So there are different tools that, allow you to build different types of products. So there are no code tools that They're designed to help you build Ios apps.

So I have to look up what the name of them is because I haven't actually used it. There are 2 of them out there that are quite big. Oh. And so there, Yeah. So there are, so what you see is that there are a lot of stand alone apps that solve for specific use cases.

So you've got I'm just trying to think what the name of the one was that does, iOS apps.

Maybe it will get Backed to me later on. But there is something for that, and you can basically publish your app to the app store.

Then you've got Bubble, which I think is what Web apps are in a in a so a lot of people who wanna build, like, Airbnb clones with the backing functionality that something like Airbnb has, a lot of people use Bubble for that. Okay.

Webflow is primarily for building brochure websites. But because they have a Pretty good API. You can actually connect it with Airtable and all those other tools, which allows you to build back end functionality to a certain extent. There are definitely limitations that you're gonna run into when, trying to glue together multiple tools with each other, but they do the trick. But It really comes down I think it comes down to what exactly you're trying to build.

And Yeah. If you wanna build, like a basic, no. Something like the Unicorn Factory, basically, a bunch of landing pages stacked on top of each other with Yeah. A little bit of back end functionality that I can create with MemberStack. Then using something like Webflow, Airtable, and Memosang is completely fine. As soon as you start to want to build an actual app, then You probably wanna look at a tool like Bubble, but there are, like, pros and cons with every tool. So it's really comes down to figuring out what's most important, how far you wanna take it. I mean, a lot of people build their MVPs in NoCo tools before they raise their, like, you know, their seed round or their series a round. It really depends what your goals are with it. Yeah. It's funny. There's there in in our world, there's, like, a lot of promise of write once,

deploy everywhere kind of tools, and none of them ever End up working correctly or or they're they're not great experiences. So it it's it's yeah. It's interesting to see that's also kind of the case. Yeah. It it kinda works, but you you definitely hit edge cases everywhere you go, and you gotta sort of account for those or make trade offs.

Can you talk about Airtable? This is something we hear a lot about. What what is Airtable? Yeah. I'm interested in Airtable, you know. So Airtable is a database tool,

kind of from a no no code perspective, the way that I describe it is like Google Sheets with a lot more functionality.

So, The way that I use it is it basically stores all of the information, that I use on the Unicorn Factory, so all of the information, that creates the profile pages is on there. All of the messages that, Client center freelancers is stored inside of your table. And there are a whole bunch of different things that you can do with it, that makes it a really great tool to basically manage the flow of data.

So at a high level, the way that you use it is you just store different content in there. But then they also have things Called views, which basically allows you to create filtered views of your database, and you can use those views to trigger workflows. So for example, if A status of a record is changed to approved.

Then you can use that view to trigger a workflow in a tool like Zapier, Where it then sends that data to, Webflow.

They've also added a whole bunch of things that have really made it even better.

Like, Airtable scripts was a huge game changer. So you can basically write JavaScript and connect your Airtable base to, You know, whatever tools you want, that has been phenomenal.

And, they also have a whole they've got, like, a third party, like, App developer community now. So a whole bunch of people are building little apps that you can use inside of Airtable To, for example, you know, use different APIs in a no code y way. And so, yeah, it's, basically a database tool.

It's funny. There are so many, so many instances that developers reach for writing even, like, custom solutions when a Google Sheet will work. You know, Wes and I, we rely on Google Sheets kind of a lot for especially, like, dealing with our organization and and preparing for the show even. And that that makes me interested in wondering how even we could use something like Airtable for, souped up Google Sheets Interaction. Some of the stuff that feels rough with how we're doing it, you know, right now. It's true. Because, like, we have we have Notion, and we have all our episodes in Notion.

And then we have our sponsors in a sheet, and there's, like, this disconnect between the 2. And, like, here, Scott and I are 2 developers fully capable, And we're copy pasting every single show, the sponsors from Google Sheets. You know? Like, definitely, here, we're we're kinda using too no code. Like, I I would even go as far to say, like, Notion is a no code tool. Like, because Especially now that there's a lot more, like, tools around Notion 2 website Tools where you write your website at Notion. Yeah.

Yeah. I definitely say Notion is a no code tool. A lot of people in the no code space Talk about Notion as a no code tool. And especially now that they, they've released a Zapier integration, and that's, like, the tell it all, you know? It's like as soon as you have your own Zapier integration, it's become real. You're welcomed into the no coaching

Oh, that that's cool. Let's talk about cost. My my thing with these these tools and services, is that I always look at them And I go, like, it's death by a 1,000 cuts with these services. You just, oh, what's another $10 a month? And, oh, I need to bump up to the next Service. Oh, it's $25 a month. And before you know it, you've got 100 of dollars a month. Is is cost a significant thing for you? Is it worth it in in

In trade off for what you're building? Yeah. So I I don't I don't really have anything to compare it to because I never was in the coding world. So Yeah. I don't know how much costs are there. But when I started the Unicorn Factory, it cost me $100 a month to run the entire thing, and that was Webflow, Airtable, and Zapier. And so that was something that was The dream for me, because, I mean, the opportunity cost is hiring developers, and, like, you know, that is Significant.

Now I'm up to the point where I probably spend about $600 a month on no code tools, but it powers the unicorn factory.

I've pretty much got my YouTube stuff automated.

I've pretty much automated 80 to 85 percent of the things that I do on a day to day basis using these tools. So, you know, it it, you know, it scales up as your businesses grow, but, you know, It's I don't find it bad just because the revenue, that I've been generating from my business has scaled with it as well. Yeah. And so it Only makes up a small fraction of the overall, you know,

cost. And there's definitely something to say about, you know, as painful as this will be to hear for developers. There there's something to say about That that cost being worth it because developers are expensive. And we've we've lost developers because we just flat out can't pay, what other FAANG companies or whoever are willing to pay or able to pay. And as a small business, you know, we we get hit a little bit Trying to bring on developer help. So,

I definitely hear what you're saying. It it it there is a cost associated with it, but it is kind of A drop in the bucket compared to hiring a developer to do all of the same stuff. It it it's just that I I think that that over time, like, it doesn't necessarily mean that that Replaces developers. I think a for a lot of people, it's the just getting started part, which is the biggest barrier to entry. It's like, how do I get at least, like, a landing page of my, like, Startup idea up and running. You know? That is something where it's like, do you really wanna drop, like, 3 k on that? Mhmm. To validate your idea or to get some people's eyes on it or yeah. And then you have, like, no control of the actual build as well, which means whenever you wanna make changes, it's like you're hiring someone. You're taking up someone's Time. And it's a very, like, in demand skill set. So, of course, it should cost a lot as well. But it's kind of like, is it worth it? Is it not worth it? But, like, Me, for example, like, when I started, I was kind of, like, I just wanna get this up and running myself, see how far I can get it. Now I'm at a point where I hire developers because I'm, like, okay, this is a barrier that I've hit.

Now, I need to, now bring on a developer to, like, take it further is, you know

You know, just the way to go. Totally. Let's talk about one of our sponsors today, Strapi. They're a JavaScript and TypeScript now. They they got that in beta.

CMS that has a REST and GraphQL API to power all of your content applications. They let you authenticate your users with multiple log Login providers secure your apps with the content.

They can work with any JavaScript framework out there.

They take all the heavy lifting out of building a back And an API development. So if I were to put it straight for what it is, it's it's a CMS. It's an API development. It's a framework for, building out all of your types, relating that to types together, and doing all of your CRUD operations with it, As well as they give you a whole UI to actually manage all of that data. It's awesome. I want you to check it out at strappy.i0forward/demo.

You can give it a try. They also have an entire marketplace at market.strappy.i0, and a bunch of learning, YouTube videos. And the docs are Thank you, Strapi, for sponsoring. We're going to move into the next section, which we don't have a name. I asked on Twitter what people should Well, we should name this this specific question.

Alright. So let's get into the questions.

What computer do you use?

MacBook Air.

Twenty twenty. I'm not sure. Just a MacBook Air. I guess

that There there's a huge benefit to, using no code tools is that you don't have super heavy processes running on your computer, and you can go for a nice light laptop with that. That's great. Yeah. We we find ourselves running these monster machines just to

Compile some JavaScript.

Thank god.

We, we obviously also do video as well, but, That's that's great. What about a keyboard?

I just have the normal mech keyboard,

that you get. Yeah. What do we want? You might be surprised, but just about every single person we've interviewed has said the exact same thing.

In a world where Instagramable keyboards are are kind of the hotness, it's like Everyone who we've interviewed so far is, like, yeah. I use the Mac keyboard.

Yeah. It's good. Yeah. It does. What about phone? I take it I iPhone, if you're you got it on the Mac Ecosystem?

I got the iPhone Pro 13 plus. Hey. When I when I got, like, my, when I got, like, my 2nd YouTube, Like, revenue paycheck. I was just like, let let's let's go and buy myself some some new gear. I hear you. I got a new phone, and I got the MacBook here. Nice. I have a question about,

coming to Canada. How did you react to the price for phone plans in Canada, or is it the same in New Zealand? That's a good question. Oh, I thought you would be like, oh my goodness. That's Canada has some of the most expensive wireless. I I don't know anything about that. I didn't know they were expensive. Yeah. I I spend, I don't know. Like, a 120, $150 a month on my phone bill. I spent about 100. So Okay. Yeah. It's pretty expensive in New Zealand as well. We said we spent about 100 less on ours. I don't know. It doesn't seem really 100 each. No. No. Oh, yeah. We I regularly have a, Wow. $250,

phone bill. Oh, yeah. Courtney and I have, like, unlimited data through T Mobile, and it's a $100 up. It's not a thing in Canada. I I pay for the 50 gig plan, which is the most you can possibly get. And that only

you can only get 10 gigs up until about a year ago.

Oh, wow. During the pandemic pleading with them on the phone. I was like, my kids are doing online school. I need more data.

These kids, They need to watch Bluey.

Yeah.

And we don't talk about Bluey in in front of New Zealanders. We don't wanna I don't wanna mix them up with Australians.

Mhmm.

What okay. This is a funny one.

You might Say none. What text editor, theme, and font do you use? Oh, Airtable scripts. The Airtable scripts code editor. Yep. So do you not do you do you even have a code editor installed in your machine or you're literally everything is in the browser? So I did have Versus Code for a while.

So when I had my phase of wanting to learn how to code, someone said you need v s code.

The only problem was I just had no clue how to code, so it just sat there for a while.

So yeah.

So, yeah, I don't really have a code here to turn that since anymore. That tracks that tracks with, the the the entire Yeah. The whole podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. If if you were to start I'm gonna I'm gonna augment this question for you because it's a coding question. If you were to start No coating from scratch today.

What what tools would you pick up? I'd start off with Webflow.

Mhmm.

I'd learn how to build basic Landing pages.

And then once I know how to build basic landing pages, then I'd look into Other tools. So I'll probably say the next tool I'd learn is, like, Zapier. And this is assuming I know nothing about automation, and I'll basically try and learn how to Do real basic workflows. For example, setting out workflows where you can send yourself a Slack notification when when someone fills out the contact form on your website.

And, then I would learn Airtable. So those are the 3 that I'd learn in that order, Webflow, Zapier, Airtable. Cool. I'd actually

an an augmented question to that. Have you heard of Editor X? Is this something you've heard of? I have. The the is it what what are your feelings on it initially? Because I see this I see it pop up occasionally. I'm like, it's just a lot of stuff, but I have no idea how it is you know, what it what it. Yeah. So, I mean, Editor X,

I think has a lot of similarities to how, Webflow does things.

I mean, Webflow Has kind of I don't I don't know what we've floated significantly different in the marketing compared to something like Squarespace that was already out there, all Wix that was already out there. But, since Webflow's come out, It's kind of going like a little bit of a cult following around it, like, especially, like, on designs where I think a lot of people will be using Webflow to build their landing pages. And so a lot of these Companies have tried to, you know, take inspiration from a lot of the things that Webflow were doing. But it's a bit hard to like, I I'm I'm not gonna use editor x. I mean, like, I don't jump between tools that often. I don't even really adopt yeah. I don't even really with that. Yeah. I don't even really adopt new tools. Like, even though there are a lot of them out there, I try to keep it to the smallest amount of tools possible.

And so I haven't tried Ida the X. Honestly, that's probably smart. We have we have, like, a major churn issue in our industry where you're just kind of hopping from 1 tool to the next stood for, like, minor upgrades here and there. And and I I'm honestly one to talk. I'm a I'm a big offender of of this myself. So, I think that's really smart, and I wish I had the self control to do that.

Yeah. It's just learning the interfaces from scratch. Just the idea of that is just like,

Oh, no. Productivity,

strike. If you have one piece of advice to beginners, and and this could be literally anyone who is Saying, I wanna build an app or a website or something, what would that be? Honestly, get started.

A lot of the stuff that I've learned Has been through trial and error. And, I always say this with people who are just getting into Webflow, be prepared to feel like Nothing works for 3 weeks, but just stick to it. And then eventually, you'll get the hang of it. Because one of the things that happens that Has happened across all of the tools I've learned is as soon as you spend enough time in a certain tool, you get connected to the community and then you start to get the hang of how to Solve use cases faster. So pick a project that would be fun to work on and then just, you know,

Stick to it for a certain period of time. It's it's shocking how many things that you say are exactly the same things that we're talking about in the code world. So That's, like, really reassuring to me. Nice. Do you do you find this is I'm deviating because I just have another question here.

Find that there is demand for, like, Webflow consultants or something like that. Like, are there companies out there who say, like, we need somebody who knows Webflow cold, and we wanna hire them. Is that a thing? Oh, yeah. I mean

oh, yeah. So we put Antti Airtable, I think, are 2 Of the tools that as stand alone tools that have created a lot of demand, like, you can like, nowadays, like, Netflix is, like, hiring people to be ear table consultants and stuff like that.

Whenever but in terms of Webflow, yeah. I mean, Webflow is such a huge space now. People are making a lot of money in the space, you know, just because a lot of designers now are just building the sites themselves.

And not just that, they can actually hand off the site to their clients, and their clients can make enough changes themselves without actually breaking the entire site, which means that there's so many, businesses, especially in the SaaS space, that are just like, yeah, let's hand over the marketing site to our marketing team. And so that has created that demand for Webflow developers, Webflow consultants, Webflow designers, that stuff. Interesting. Alright. What's, So, one thing that you're excited about in the future of no code? So, at the moment, I am really excited about learning scripting.

This is, This has been something that has been, like, game changing for me. I've been so excited about it because for the longest Chaim, I've always kinda be, like, the ideas person. Like, I I couldn't give a code to save myself, and I would be The person who would constantly be going up to developer with the most knucklehead ideas for features that no one ever needed.

And so, now Having discovered those no code tools meant that I could actually take a lot of those ideas and actually get something up and running.

And now, I'm getting to the point where I've understood how databases work. I understand how aspects of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Which means now that I've started getting into the scripting part of things, I can actually write, like, 70 lines of code, and it actually ends up working, which is, like, phenomenal.

Like and and, I'm still at the phase of learning scripting where when I get, like, a 200 response from an API, I'm just like, wow. This is Basic. How do I make this happen? I still have that. I'm like, what? Like, 15 years in, and I was like, oh.

I do too. Yeah. I think that's hard the best. It's working. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Wow. I can't believe it. And so it it kinda is coming full circle. It's like, I die I I fell into the no code world by not knowing how to code, and now I'm, like, hitting back into territory when I'm where I'm learning how to code. And so I am looking forward So what I'm excited about for the future is I think that the that a lot of these no code tools are going to open the doors up even more For developers to come in and bring custom code into those tools, and that will allow us to break through some of the barriers that no code Tools currently have even more.

And yeah. So that is what I'm most excited about at the moment. You know what that that reminds me a lot In in our world, we we've often had this this back end development.

The the server side development has been, like, a very kind of difficult world to break into As a UI developer, somebody who's building UIs and animations and stuff. And now there's a ton of new tools that have made it Open the door for UI developers to build full stack applications, and what you're seeing is what what's called the rise of the you know, the full stack developer here, the person who can do it all. Because for so long, there has been so many barriers, and now those barriers have opened the doors. And and vice versa too, I mean, there's a lot of UI tools now that exist Even like what you you're talking about that opened the door for back end developers to to move into to UI. So it's we're all gonna be able to build More things, and I this is very exciting to me too. Yeah. Do you ever see a world

where you become You're just like, wow. This scripting thing and, like, maybe a little bit of back end. Oh, maybe a little, smelter, a little react framework, and Boom. Next day, you wake up, and you're a full blown, a a no code or, sorry, a code developer.

I mean, To be honest, I wouldn't rule it out. I mean, me choosing no code tools was not because I didn't like code, It was because I couldn't code. And so now that I'm starting to get the hang of it, I'd like to be honest, I'm nowhere near the point where I could just go out and build an app. Like But but I've got enough little building blocks to see a path to getting to that point. And so I think I would look at it on a case by case basis. For example, if I look at, like, building a simple marketing website, I never see myself writing that in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Like, never. Because it's kind of like, what's the point? But I do see myself, potentially writing a lot of my workflows with scripts Because essentially, I find it's actually slightly faster to just write it out in scripts. It accounts for a lot more use cases. You have a lot more flexibility with, there were some of the automation tools.

So I think that in the future, I am definitely gonna have, like, a hybrid model of, like, using no code tools and coding. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Well Yeah. If you, you want a JavaScript course to learn a few more things, hit me up. I'll hook you up.

No. Hey. I I've I've I before the show, I checked it all out, and I was like, wow. Yes.

Absolutely.

Cool. Cool.

I think that's all of our questions here.

Wish any, any other things we didn't cover about the no code movement or anything that With that, or should we move into some shameless plugs? I think we I think, we've covered

most of the things. Maybe with some of the shameless plugs, I'll have a little bit of Additional stuff to add to the mix? Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's get into that. Let's let's plug away. What what do you have to plug to our audience? Okay. So, first of all, I mean, I I I have a little YouTube channel that I, do every once in a while. So if you wanna kind of see, like, little basic tutorials on how you can build things with NoCo tools, I started it as, like, a little bit of a personal challenge about a year and a half ago just to see what I could do with it.

It was cool. It was, like, it was good fun.

It took a while to get used to it, and I do cringe a bit when I look at, like, my first few videos, but We all do that. Yeah. Yeah. But I The I I enjoy it because I get excited about learning different things, and so I kind of learn I I kinda make the tutorials as I learn different things. So I've actually, She had a lot of the tutorials for how I built things for the unicorn factory, and as a result, there have been a whole bunch of marketplaces that have been built. And there's actually, like, nothing better than, like, Having people reach out to me being like, hey, I built, like, a marketplace based off your tutorials.

And so, that is, I think, a good place to get started.

Also, if you wanna kinda, see how I built the unicorn factory, I I put, like, a little presentation on my website.

It's, like, about 45 minutes long, and it kind of adds a lot of context to what the tutorials are about. And it's kind of like a starting point for anyone just wanting to learn a bit more about no code.

Then and this is the one that I've been most excited about. Yeah. I don't know how you guys are about, because I wanna hear your thoughts on this. So, A friend of mine, Aaron and I, we kind of started learning how to use Airtable scripts together. And, he he's not a coder either. He works at Airtable. He does all of their, tutorials for them. And, After a while, with help from some developers, we started to, like, get the hang of how we can actually use your table scripts. And so we fit and, You know, we were in that phase of being super excited about it. So we decided, hey, why not make, like, a series of tutorials Where we can show people how to code. Yeah. Which is a joke because we're not really developers.

But that's sometimes the way. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of, hey, this is gonna motivate us to keep learning scripting. It's like if we actually try and come up with a use case. For example, how can we, create Webflow CMS items inside of your table scripts? So we created, this little online community called Code Meets No Code Uh-huh. Where we teach people how to use Airtable scripts. And so what we do is we read our the API docs of our favorite tools like Webflow, Stripe, Postman, stuff like that.

And we basically make tutorials for non developers to show them the basics of your table scripts. And it's basically you can just Follow along.

We make, like, little videos where you can kind of just copy what we're doing, or you can change it in whatever way you want. And yeah. So that's

That's the final plug. Code control code. Yeah. Yeah. I got I pulled that up just now. Nice. Cool. Awesome.

I don't know if you also came with sick pick or not, did you? I did I did. I did. Oh. Alright. Let's hear it.

So, if anyone wants to get the hang of Webflow a bit faster.

There are 2 tools that I'd recommend checking out.

1 is Flowbase And the other one is Reeloom.

And, basically, what you can do is you can go to their website, and you can copy and paste components from their website into your Webflow canvas, and it allows you to really quickly assemble a website.

And the cool thing about it is is, the they're designed in a way that it's mostly just the wireframes of a page.

And so, essentially, your site It's structured well. Class names are there. But it gives you the ultimate flexibility to change the styling in whatever way you want.

And those 2 tools are an absolute Cheat code for learning Webflow.

So yeah. It's flowbase I think it's flowbase dotco.

And I'm on it right now.

Relume.

Yeah. Now they start off as a live as a as a, As an agency, but then they built this component library. So their URL is library.reloom.i0.

Mhmm. Cool. And it's awesome. It's like it's it's an absolute game changer for, like, building things fast and getting the hang of Webflow. So getting those early moments of, like, yes, I'm making progress here, You'll get with those tools. Cool. Man, all these sites have nice looking websites too, which is usually a good indicator. So yeah. Neat. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Sure. Coming on. That was super informative. We've had people asking us questions

forever about these no code tools, and it's It's hard to talk about them because, like, we are the coders. Right? Like, these are not tools that we use from day to day. So it's kinda interesting to hear, Somebody else's perspective

on it. So thanks a lot. Oh, thanks so much for having me. It was, it was great having a chat with you guys. And yeah.

Hopefully, like I mean, you know, no code, even developers, check it out, you know? Like, especially if you wanna spin up, like, basic marketing sites and stuff like that, It might save yourself a lot of time if you don't wanna spin up servers and all those types of things. Just get and and I honestly think that the learning curve For developers, it's like close to 0 because, essentially, once you get a hang of, like, what all the different buttons do, it is basically The visual way of coding in a lot of ways. So it's,

it won't take as long to pick up. Yeah. Totally. And it's funny. We, you know, we talk about Developers will spend hours, working on code to do a, presentation, Like a slideshow presentation. So we'll write our presentations in code. And then, like, some people will be like, well, how do you do your presentations? And Wes has been using the same thing for however many years. Some the the the very best conference talk we saw at the most recent conference we went to is just using the Google one, like Google Slides or something or no. It wasn't Google. So I was using Keynote.

Keynote.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I just use Notion and I scroll down on the giant, giant Notion page. So Like you said, there there's sometimes these things will just save you a ton of time if you're not if you're not trying to reach for custom code stuff all the time, and Maybe that's the, the key to productivity there. So well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Connor. Love chatting with you, and, Yeah. Check out all Connor's links. We'll have them all in the show notes if you can't find anything, and, check out all Connor's work in YouTube and subscribe and all that stuff, and and thanks so much coming on the show. Cool. Thanks. Peace. Peace.

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