WTF #1

WTF No Code

I entered the newsletter space about five years ago when I co-created Podcast Delivery. The premise was simple – we crawl through the depths of the internet to find one recently released podcast and delivery it to your inbox in the form of a fresh recommendation.

We intentionally kept things inexpensive and incredibly manual since we were out to prove the hypothesis that people were inundated with too much noise while searching for a new podcast to listen to. In fact, it takes no time at all to see just how fruitless it is to ask for Twitter for podcast recommendations.

We thought we could catch that lightening in a bottle while guiding people away from the Twitter void toward a newsletter instead and at the time it made perfect sense to build that newsletter using Mailchimp.

Mailchimp was simple, inviting, and aligned with everything that podcasting was about at the time.

Things have changed.

Today, Intuit owns the brand that once inspired coy or budding creators like myself to give it a whirl. Funny thing about whirls is that they can present spin-off ideas at every turn. Case in point: a freelance business and this newsletter.

WTF No Code is inspired by Podcast Delivery and everything its afforded me – specifically the freedom to try ideas that start from a spark, hone and evolve my technical and business skills, and ultimately work create on my own terms.

You'll end up with criticisms about the complicated side of tech and no code. Also, you can expect a healthy dose of what goes into my freelance projects, broken down into steps that probably make sense.

🆗 Simple $%!#

My latest project update or feature release. That's it. That's the $%!#.

The Need

A few clients have shown interest in a leaderboard project I contributed to and recreated for others a couple of times. I figured I'd find a way to make my life easier by building reusable templates for others to purchase.

And thus socialleaderboard.co was born.

The Stack

• Airtable for the database

• Make for the automations

• Webflow for the website

• Stripe for payments

• Calendly for booking

• Notion for documentation

• Slack for alerts

The Result (ELI5)

You can purchase your own DIY Kit and put together your own social leaderboard to run a Twitter competition. This is all thanks to Stripe's recent foray into no code options built on top of their stellar platform.

The Extended Version

Once a purchase is made, a few things kick off. I get alerted to the completed purchase and an email is automatically sent to my customer. That email gives them all the assets and access they need to stand up their own social leaderboard. If they bought a plan that includes a meeting with me, they're given a private Calendly link to put some time in my calendar.

The cool part is that I layered on some launch promos that gives you a pretty hefty discount if you buy in early. The support is appreciated no matter when you buy. Things will change a bit as feedback comes in but this 3-week project (while on a bit of a travel stint) was a lot of fun to put together!

🌶 Spicy Takes

This gets your attention today but won't mean much in a few months.

This one's pretty easy to knock down but Jon's done a remarkable job pulling back the curtain on a bootstrapped business. Bannerbear isn't perfect but once you wrap your head around its API you can automate a lot of your painfully manual work away.

This is only somewhat spicy, especially since every creator would love that elusive customer willing to drop their credit card for a monthly five-figure subscription. Jon hasn't locked that type of customer down yet and you can see so for yourself here. The logic is sound though.

🌶🌶 (out of 5)

Podcast Delivery uses Bannerbear along with Airtable and Unsplash to create unique content for Instagram in a just a few clicks. This isn't a plug – it's saved me hours of tedious, manual work that made things pretty unenjoyable.

Reply if you want to know more about how I put that all together.

🎲Dicey Makes

Every one deserves some criticism. I'll share some unsolicited feedback in a sentence or two and I'll try to keep it constructive.

With everything going sideways at Twitter Dot Com, who knows what'll happen next. Will it become a protocol? Who knows, but Grace is here to remix her portfolio and make it all things Twitter.

Is it a perfect way to convey your experience or portfolio? Maybe..? Grace seems to know where this sort of thing may work and where it may not–

The real win here is that this all came together because of an idea and a desire to try something different. You don't always need to be driven by metrics and no code makes it easy to see an idea through without having to sell the farm.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to count the number of people that have subscribed to this newsletter to read about what I really think about no code.