Aron Korenblit is part of the teaching team at Airtable. Prior to joining Airtable Aron created the Essential Guide to Airtable, a popular course on Airtable. Aron is a master at figuring out how to "Automate All the Things" with the hopes to help people learn to automate the mundane so they can focus on what they love. Ben & Aron talk about automation, startups and how using no-code can simply make your life better, regardless of your profession. You can see a short backstory of AATT is here

Aron - Airtable - Stories Podcast-MP3 for Audio Podcasting

Sun, 4/26 5:43PM • 48:02

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, code, table, air, thinking, automate, create, build, live stream, content, maker, tools, ultimately, spend, world, community, backstory, companies, enjoy, reach

SPEAKERS

Aron - Airtable, Ben Tossell

Ben Tossell  00:00

Aron - Airtable  00:23

Welcome on. Hey, Ben, good to hear. Good to hear from you.

Ben Tossell  00:27

Yeah, you too. How do you wanna introduce yourself briefly and tell people who you are and what you're doing?

Aron - Airtable  00:34

Yeah, sure. So my name is Aaron kornblut. I'm part of the Education team at AIR table. Before joining air table, I guess my my claim to fame is the Essential Guide to air table, which I launched about a ye roughly over a year ago. And I was part of the maker pad team for a little bit as well and, more generally, kind of have been doing a lot of tutorials and helping folks in the no code space. Learn how to kind of automate all the things.

Ben Tossell  01:11

Yeah. You said ultimate or things is that like actual like use that or like a side thing I saw you recently did the website redone But

Aron - Airtable  01:21

yeah, I guess automate all the things is is everything that doesn't fit into a job or something like that. So maybe a little backstory there would be interesting essentially how this all started. I never set out to be a tutorial maker or a no coder. Actually how it all started was I'm in Montreal and none of my friends work in the tech world and I'd be working with startups for a couple years and I and I realized that all of my friends, spend a bunch of time on manual stuff, so they had no idea how Excel worked. So the backstory is actually my, my roommate asked me, you know, how can I calculate the number of days between two dates? And I was like, Oh, you use an Excel sheet. And he's like, I've never heard of this Excel you speak of. And you'd spend hours every week. You know, calculating the number of days to not blow a legal deadline. And so I started doing these things where I'd invite people and invite friends essentially to my house and show them how to automate things and they'd submit issues that they were having, if you will, and we'd have dinner and I would show them a few tools. And I would call them automate all the thing dinners.

02:49

And,

Aron - Airtable  02:50

you know, after the dinner, a lot of people would say, Hey, you know, I, I love this tool that you showed, can you give us a little more, a little more resources and so I would To record these like snippets, and you know, be showing air table all the time. And finally, you know, I kept showing it showing and people said, Hey, can you like, give us a full tour of air table? And I said, Okay, well, I'll record it for everyone. And that's how the Essential Guide to air table came up. So it's, that's why it's always called automate all things.

03:23

us our Did you also have to cook the dinners when, you

Aron - Airtable  03:29

know, everyone would chip in 15 bucks and we'd we'd order sushi, because then it was actually like, quite quite involved because I would have like this, this custom presentation for the kind of issues that people would submit. I took this very seriously. And, and people were quite excited about it. It was definitely weird. Like, hey, come to this dude's house. And you know, he's gonna talk to you about tech tools for a couple of hours. But you know, people seem to like it and I definitely enjoy as well.

04:01

Yeah, I like that idea seems that you've heard of any, like any previous backstory or anyone's sort of first steps into the tech world is to do with get people to your house and do like a presentation in your living room and eating sushi, but not that different, right?

Aron - Airtable  04:20

Yeah. Well, who would have thought that it would lead to a V on a podcast with you? So, definitely, the world works in mysterious ways.

04:29

Yeah, sure. Yeah, you said that No, you didn't set out to become a tutorial maker or no coda. I think that's probably true for most if not all of the people who are tutorial makers or mocha makers. So when when people sort of said about this, okay, show me what air table stuff. Is there any courses out there and at the time, or did you just think I just want to do my own version, because I know what I'm doing. Like, isn't it like doing a courses often seems a lot less daunting than it actually is when you do it, like you and I both know about recording a video for anything, even if it's like one topic. People think it's I think it's a lot simpler than this, but it's really, really not right.

05:21

Yeah, um,

Aron - Airtable  05:23

you know, I would say so I don't want to put myself in the bucket of people who knew what they're doing and I still wouldn't necessarily put myself in that bucket you know, I I definitely never I never viewed it as Oh, you know, what's out there. And obviously there there there was a lot of content out there on your table, or table has always had very vibrant community then part of those are content creators. And so I did look around and saw Hey, seems to be some interesting content. And when I set out to do the course really it was kind of like, would this work? Would this be interesting? I was surprised when people signed up to be honest, like, still surprised when people sign up I people seem to enjoy it, which is, you know, amazing and it's great. I love when people reach out and say that it's helped them in some way. But really, you know, mine was a personal challenge. And I had this, this, this small community of people who had come to these dinners who were probably already interested in that course. And so, you know, I could always fall back on them and say, Hey, is this valuable to you at least? And I think it definitely seems daunting, and it definitely felt daunting. But frankly, you know, the setup was quite small. I recorded on my Mac, I use Camtasia. I had a script and you know, I have just kind of went with my gut as to what I thought people would, you know, struggle with. And that's it. So it was definitely a lot of work, especially just feeling comfortable with was the main challenge. But I, I didn't do much research, I kind of went with it and said, You know if this just died is whatever doesn't really matter 10 people who came to my dinners who might watch it till the end, that'd be great. That'd be you know, I'd be happy with that outcome. The one the one I have now is much more exciting, definitely. But it was definitely not expected.

07:41

So is there a new version of the table course you have now then what that one was, or,

Aron - Airtable  07:48

frankly, not really, it's very similar to what it was. I've been based on the feedback editing a few parts, cutting out some sections. But you know, it's it's it's helped pretty well. And indefinitely. There's a bunch of new air table stuff over the last year scripting block and just a bunch of other blocks, more niche functionality that we'd love to cover. That's, that's now a lot of my job. So, but no actually that that structure initial structure held up pretty well. So it was quite exciting that people even a year on are still kind of mainly watching things built in January last year.

08:34

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, we'll get into some of the, the ethical specific stuff that you're doing a bit later on. But I think you've done a lot of live streams. And I've seen Tiffany tweeted, like, I'm doing a live stream here, there and everywhere. And you sort of feel quite comfortable on a live stream, whereas I think I'm like, not sure what the fuck I'm doing here. How'd you like do that? I wonder if which is more natural, which was more natural? Was it like the course thing? And then you thought, well, I just want to do this a bit more interactively with live stuff, or is it just both the tests? Do you feel more comfortable in one setting over the other? or? Yeah, great question. So

09:23

I think

Aron - Airtable  09:25

I've thought about, so it's gonna sound really terrible. But the main value for me of a live stream is that it forces you to create content in a defined amount of time. So if I go live for 30 minutes, I know that at the end of that 30 minutes, I have a 30 minute, like content piece, right? And you know, when you're creating pre recorded stuff, people have the expectation of a high level of quality in terms of the way you speak, the actions that you do on the screen. In Unfortunately, they don't kind of allow mistakes. And actually think mistakes are probably where people learn the most. So watching people going through the issues and struggles of building. And so a live stream actually combines both what I think is an easy way to create content. And that's not the main value that I get from it. But it's that you can actually see someone build, see the mistakes that they're making. And most importantly, see how they fix those mistakes. Were in pre recorded if I send you something that isn't live, and there's a mistake in it, and I'm like looking through documentation, you you would feel that's weird, because you would just cycle through. So live content was a kind of this mix for me of easy to create. It forced me to create content every week, and especially as someone who works full time and has has always had a job while doing this. It creates a steady stream of output. And I also feel like for those who would come and listen through the whole thing, it was actually a better learning experience. So I'm personally a huge fan of, of life, both from a host perspective, but also from a way to learn. Nearly like I definitely changed the way I would livestream if you go to the initial ones, it was like, an hour and a half and I'd be by myself. And, you know, just you could feel that it was a struggle for me to get to the end. So it's definitely not what you want. And so, you know, those kind of 40 to 45 minute sessions where, you know, I know that I'm going to get through it, but there are some parts where it's a little tricky, I might not put the right parameter and I actually go through how would I fix that issue live from from from folks joining. That's really been a good way for them to learn. So I'm I really like live streams in terms of building

11:56

but you know, no co

Aron - Airtable  11:59

lead itself well to that format, because you can get a lot done in 45 minutes, right? So if you're going to three, four or five hours, like, if, as a host, I can't, I can't talk and work for three, five hours. Because after two, it'd be really boring. And, you know, you want to get to something tangible and useful within, you know, the time that people are joining. So, no code actually, I think, lends itself very, very well to that format, because in 45 minutes, I can create a pretty cool process, especially that I've prepared it before. So I actually find livestream to be a really good format that I'm hoping to, like it's a lot of my job now. So it's really fun to it's, we don't call them live streams, but they are essentially live streams. And, you know, I've had huge fun with it. So and that's that's most important thing, right? Ultimately, if I enjoy doing it, I will keep it doing it. And that'll lend itself to better content. And, you know, for folks who don't like it, well, you know, they can go to that pre recorded YouTube stuff. There's no lack of that out there in the world.

13:11

Yeah. And I think that's a good point of, if you enjoy doing it, people are gonna know, like, you're gonna enjoy watching it more than you know that someone's going through all that, like, here's this piece. Now, there's this piece, there's this when

Aron - Airtable  13:29

I get the question a lot around, you know, I want to create content, or I want to, you know, be part of the no code community and they think, and they say, how did you start or how do you do it and ultimately, you know, for me, it's always been do I enjoy creating that type of content, whether you know, it's my long for newsletter or these live streams. Whenever I don't like doing something I stopped doing it. Especially because I don't get paid. Right? So it's not like someone you know, so I'm putting it out in the world for free. So if I'm not enjoying doing it, why would I keep doing it? And also because it creates a virtuous cycle where if I enjoy doing it, I want to get better at it. And if some people enjoy it will as I get better at it, we'll find more and more people who enjoy it. And frankly, you know, I don't I don't never want to have this large viewer base I I'm really excited by the fact that there may be a few people out there who really really enjoy this stuff. In that's always been the people I get feedback from and say, Hey, you know, what, what are you want to learn? Like, what are some of the tools that you're struggling with? And, you know, that's smaller, very interested base. You know, for me has been really beneficial in terms of improving the type of content In just being more useful, I guess or and still having fun.

15:05

Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you talk about the making mistakes. Not that you mean to make mistakes, but like making mistakes in the show how you fix them is a huge piece of the learning. And yeah, with that, I think it probably lends itself well to no code because it's so visual. Um, and actually, yeah, I think I've seen some live streams or some posts at the end where you're saying, I'm sorry, we didn't manage to figure it out.

15:32

Yeah.

Aron - Airtable  15:34

So So okay, for everyone who has enjoyed one of my slash streams, that actually only happened once a month. And and yeah, no, that's fine. It's fine. It's actually really interesting story. So I was trying to do the subset clone. ending it was like livestream number six, or it was still I would say in the relatively early days where I hadn't figured out the amount of preparedness I needed to do. So essentially, you want to be prepared but not too prepared. So it's like a 10 minute livestream where you get everything right. And so I was definitely on the unprepared side, unfortunately. And so I was going through and I couldn't get this member stack web flow thing to work, like I had the first part. But these were in the days where I was doing them really long. And then, so I'm trying to get it done. I'm trying to it's not working. And then Duncan, the actual founder of numbers stack, or the one of the cofounders of member stack is in the chat. And Doug's like, Oh, I know what the issue is. So I was like, Oh, great. You like come on the stream with me and fix it. And then so so Duncan actually came on on zoom, we shared our screen and I worked through the issue. And this is like, it's like an hour and 15 minutes into the stream when we start chatting and I start asking him questions or a member stack. And you know, what he's thinking and what the future looks like for him. And I think there were like two people watching By this point, and it seemed like those two people were really interested in the discussion that we were having around Ember sack. And so so although we technically didn't get to the end of you know, of that stream or of that build, I had a ton of fun chatting to Duncan and this was before, no code comm so we actually met at no code conference and this is actually how I met Dunkin. So So yeah, there was a silver lining to that stream both to myself and to Dunkin and to people who came live. So I think the despite not getting to the end of that live stream, I think it was fun for everyone who

Ben Tossell  17:39

joined. Yeah, definitely, I think and yeah, just clean it up. It was doing even once. I did, I mean, we

Aron - Airtable  17:46

came we came very close to not not having like, you know, there's that sense of you're building something live and it's not working and you start sweating and you're like, Oh, am I ever gonna get through this? And it's funny because a few people wrote To me after in the day enjoy those moments. So they know like they enjoy seeing the sweat on stream, which I don't know what that says about them. Yeah. Like, I would definitely not like seeing some dude. You know, just someone's struggling through, get his pick? Yeah, it's definitely stressful. It's not for everyone. There's definitely a few times where I was like, I'm not sure we're gonna get through this one, you know.

18:28

But But so far, I think we've been okay. Yeah.

18:32

People go on a journey with you. Right. So that's what people are interested in, whether it's a company that they're really in and they follow the junior company, or it's like, the people behind there and that sort of stuff. So, yeah, I think it's good to show some vulnerabilities whether you mean it or not. And yeah, you mentioned in your intro that you helped us with some stuff, you do some tutorials for us and then you are now working at one of our close partners, which is a table so how how did that all happen? They? Did you ping them your course and say, hey, look, I've done this, or did you apply for anything? What happened now?

Aron - Airtable  19:13

Yeah, it would, it would be a great story if I just reached out to them and said, hey, I've got this course and they're like, Oh my god, that's so amazing. Please join air table. That's not at all how it happened. You know, no, I, I knew someone who knew someone who worked at AIR table. And then I applied online, just like everybody else, and then went through the interview process. And you know, the Essential Guide to air table was definitely something that seemed interesting, you know, from from their perspective, but definitely wasn't the driving force. Around me joining the team, it's definitely now that I'm part of the Education team. That experience definitely helps. But You know, more broadly, I think if I, you know, I was writing about this this week, like, I think there is no better place for folks who want to have an impact and who aren't necessarily entrepreneurs in the no code world, they should be looking to join no code companies, you know, and especially in this time that they're all say we, but we're all hiring, whether that's air table or problem members, tags, AP or web flow, all have, you know, very need a lot of people to join in, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the content route. Like it. That's not what, what, what helped it. I think the interest behind creating content is is what a lot of know code companies will will value and I think companies generally if you join a company and you're interested in what they do, that's amazing. that'll definitely put you ahead of a lot of people who are You're just kind of opportunistically applying to places. So, um, but, you know, for me joining our table, you know, wasn't tied to the Essential Guide chair table.

21:11

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting. You mentioned about the content route thing. It's like, you want to be curious in these tools. If you ever want to be part of like, work there or even to get anything done with these tools, you got to be somewhat curious. I think there's, there's people in the maker community that are like really insane at figuring stuff out, like putting stuff together saying, this is how you do this thing, but we'll never jump on a video to explain how to do it cuz they just don't like that. I was probably more in that camp, where when I first did videos, it was just like, there's a silent movie. My face was nothing. It was just like, I may as well have just been out by hand and had on it.

Aron - Airtable  22:00

I'm gonna say what everyone is thinking your videos were terrible. I think they were just like, here's a bunch of text. And like Ben is too shy to turn on his camera. And, you know, but I think frankly, like, that's an example. Right? So your, your goal was to teach people you know how to build without writing code. It wasn't to do tutorials, right. And so maker pad is, is a manifestation of that. And ultimately, you know, I think that that underlying interest is what's important. In anything, ultimately, you're kind of going back to my initial point of like, whatever you enjoy doing, that's what you should keep doing. And if you don't enjoy, you know, I don't necessarily enjoy going on on camera and filming and things. But it's a big part of what the the outcome that I want. So that's a part of it. But yeah, just yeah, your videos where we're awful, but they still worked, right? Yeah, they were unique. The content was unique. You had a community around it. And then ultimately, you found the people to who are better than you. And I think that's, yeah, that's more important. And that's the most important part.

Ben Tossell  23:14

Yeah, sure. I'm actually quite interested in that. Of all the people who I speak to, whether there are other local companies, doing content, do tutorials. I don't even know if it is like, Hey, I enjoy the process of making a video, scripting it right. And like doing the video making sure my mouse moves really smoothly, like some people are really picky with sometimes all of that and the person who's listening or no wrong choice out there. Like there's things like that, that sometimes it's just like part of the job that you want to do. But I think it's what you said is, it's the outcome of it, right? You know, that when you do this, hundreds, maybe thousands of people will be able to like see this thing and replicate that themselves. And you're like, workload is so big and so many things you can do but so untouched in that there's, like, you've got to show people a lot of these things and being able to enable other people to do that is such a powerful tool. What's the you said? You're on the Education team at our tables? What is the stuff that you do? And you mentioned about live streams, but not quite called live streams? What is the sort of the role you have that? Yeah.

Aron - Airtable  24:28

So on on the Education team, we've been thinking, and how do you educate? Just users, right, and so air table has a huge user base, and I think just more generally applicable to everyone. You know, whether you're no code company or just an educator in general, how do you touch people in different parts of their learning experience right? In you have people who are who just want information on the super nitty gritty? And then people were like, I've never touched a no code tool or air table specifically in my life. And can you? Can you walk me through it? So what we've been working on recently, is what we're calling live builds. So essentially 45 minutes will help you build a CRM, project tracker, Product Management roadmap, things like that. And going from zero to what feels like a 70 built out base. Well, it's it's fully built out. But it's not something that you could scale to like 200 people, but it definitely feels like a good starting point in 45 minutes. So that's been one type of content that we've been, you know, creating. The other that I'm working on right now is around remote webinars. So I don't know when this podcast will come out whether it will still be them, but you can find all of them at AIR table.com slash webinars. So really, I think more generally. And it's funny because I've spoken to folks at web flow, folks at parabola around education. And it's not easy. It's not an easy challenge, because you have tools that can be incredibly, incredibly complex. But that can also be very simple. And you want to try to reach as many of these people with the resources that you have. So whether it's top of the funnel folks who are like, hey, I've never built a parabola recipe or I've never created a zap, then you have people who are just care about like, I want to do a multi reference field in web flow from Xavier. Right? And then you're trying to guide people on both of those paths or in different parts of their path. So it's, and then you have to, like actually create interesting content. Right? So it's not only about what do we talk about who do we talk about But how do we actually make it interesting? So I'm opposed to like before, where I would just be in my room and be like, Oh, I think people, you know, struggle with this part because I struggled with it, you know, two weeks ago, and it might be the most niche thing ever. And obviously, the no code community is gonna love it, because no nice stuff, you know, people love. It's been a huge shift in terms of thinking, how do we how do we, you know, create interesting, compelling education formats that are efficient? And that that, you know, reach the right people where they're struggling in learning air table, but I think it's a challenge across the no code. tool set.

27:49

Yeah. So where where can people find the live build stuff is that

Aron - Airtable  27:55

Yeah, so air table, air table comm slash webinars. We're calling them webinars. But you have one on one and two, one. So what I want is a live build of project tracker or CRM. And into one, you know, we continue down that vertical. So we have CRM one on one, then CRM tool one. And that's what we're building out initially. And, yeah, people seem to love it, which is super exciting. A lot of people are coming, a lot of people are signing up. And I think there's this, there's this thirst for teach me the tool, whether that's an air table or Zapier or web flow, actually, web flow is really good at it. Not that we're not but workflows particularly good at it. So I think there's a huge thirst generally around teaching these products and just a note here, it's like, I think about this a lot. I don't think there's a thirst in the no code community, right? Like there's no lack of people like myself and maker pad and and You know, other people who are teaching advanced stuff like I want to build this automation? I think there's a huge lack of how do I teach something very simple, right, like a basic zap of, you know, basic air table functionality. And it's not as much as there's lacking content. Right? I can build a, you know, create a simple issue tracker in air table, I can create 20 of those issues, how do we actually reach the people who are, you know, put, I don't want to use the word should, but how do we reach everyday folks or people who have never heard of no code into that type of content? And I was thinking about this this week before I joined, you know, talking to you and ultimately, there is no better place to reach those kinds of people than at no code companies. Right. So if you you know, there's no more people wanting to learn web flow or zippier. or all of these tools, then at the top of the funnel of those companies, right? So as much like the work that you do I make a pad is very like no code, you know, and company people who are aware of what no code is, and have kind of identified the need of patching a few tools together to really get work done. Then you have all these folks in signing up for different tools, but are never actually like, understanding what it is. And so for me, it's really been interesting around how do you teach? How do you help those people who are just kind of like, I just want to I just want to use this thing. I don't know how it works. Please help me to just unlock that feeling, right, that aha moment for folks. And I think there's no better place to, you know, if your goal is to get as many of those aha moments for people kind of coming into the no code community even though they've never heard of them. No cook community. It's really at the top of those of those funnels. And so I'm sure you know this of like, people come to maker pad, they sign up, and then they're like, Oh my god, I you've solved this big thing for me. Right? And so whereas before, I would be like using Udemy, and mainly catering to people who have kind of identified their problem and are kind of specifically looking for resources, like, I want to manage my landing pages in air table,

31:31

to write that out,

Aron - Airtable  31:33

you actually have to be pretty advanced in your kind of, in your process of figuring out your issues. Right. So that's actually really exciting around realizing that there is no better place to teach people. I'll call it no code. I don't think anyone outside of this podcast will call it no code. Then at you know, whether it's at AIR table or other options Code companies, there's just so many people who go underserved, or who don't ultimately learn how these tools work, and that's unfortunate.

32:09

Yeah, and I mean, it's definitely like a path we were sprinting down at maker pad where we'd say, oh, Aaron, can you build like a sub stack clone in a workflow, Zapier and member stack? And then Tom, can you build this like, like the multi graph Zacchaeus like we've got all of that stuff. And for a long time, we were just hurtling at the fact that we maybe thought people were learning no code, the same paces, we were like discovering new capabilities, but maybe for our own site or for whatever else, and there are some people who definitely are in that in that space. But then equally like you said, there's like, there's still this 99% of the people who are like, yeah, Unlike a CRM system that I can build myself, that works in a way that I want it to work, right, where do I go? Like, I didn't type in how to build this without code. I didn't type it in, like in whatever way that some people are. No code may think of it like that work. Yeah, we definitely are trying to take take a step back and think, what was the What was it? What would a normal quote unquote person try and type in to say, Okay, I want to set up a membership business. Like, that's probably Yeah, that's probably the the search term. And then it's probably our job now to to identify, okay, here's like four or five ways to set up membership businesses, and then you'll need to have like, a system that is a database with a table that has this, isn't it? So we're definitely looking. I mean, our latest bootcamp is the basics of no code. And I think I didn't under underestimate How much people would like that I thought of surely everyone here like nervous loads of stuff, but we've had, like 250 people go into that bootcamp. And it's just like crazy to see how much like people love that side of it. And it's very much the basics of mocha. So we've got a lot more to do there. For sure. So, I'd love to hear as we sort of wrap up the last 510 minutes here, but let's just sort of hear about your thoughts on no coders as the movement and all that stuff. And he got some opinions. Now, I know you mentioned talking about like, 10 no code outside of this podcast, and I completely agree with you, but I don't like I'm interested in what you think. How do we how do we change that narrative?

Aron - Airtable  34:50

Yeah, I there's the controversial part of this. This podcast. I think I think is I've been a little difficult on the no code community, I think in general, I think

35:06

what what,

Aron - Airtable  35:07

how I've come to think about it recently, and I think I do think I spend too much time thinking about this because it is somewhat unimportant. But I do think to a certain extent, we should think, you know, as someone who is deeply involved in this community, like I do love it, it's been amazing. The people and the feedback that I get is just, is is just amazing, right? People have questions, we have answers. And in that Twitter world of no code is great.

35:37

I've had

Aron - Airtable  35:39

met many people and in person and digitally and people who write to me and say, Hey, I saw what you did. Here's how I you know, remixed it, and then I reuse that on another live stream. And that's been amazing. And I think, you know, the challenge that I see with with is that it's a very limited world. Right. So no call no code Twitter. is is is not is not no code generally. Right. So I think, you know, what I love about no code is its ability to shorten an outcome. So let's say you want to get a website up, you can do that very quickly. It's it's not complexity for complexity sake. And I think a lot of no code Twitter is look at this really complex thing I've built, that I'm ultimately not going to go through the motions of promoting or of making a real thing. And personally, I initially really like complexity for complexity sake, I really like building out really complex stuff, because the outcome was just, you know, standing, you know, what I realized is that outside of Twitter, you know, people have a goal. They just want to like, I want to have a membership website, and I really don't want to spend time on it. Right now. So, um, you know, their simplicity is the goal, or the outcome is what we want. But now that the more I think about it is that there's this really cool interplay between those two worlds, right? So sometimes to do a membership website, you actually need that like that multi reference Xavier. Right. And so someone has to go through that process, and figure out how that works. And kind of promote it within that world to be able to create that quote, unquote, simple website. That being said, like, I wish we would spend more time thinking about what is it that I'm trying to do here? Right, am I just building for building sake? Am I building a clone? Because I think it's interesting and that's fine. But really thinking if we want to help people,

37:52

you know, we want to

Aron - Airtable  37:54

publicize the existence of our world and publicize how awesome it is that you can connect things really easily, we should spend less time on building complex things and more time on helping people just learn simple stuff. And, you know, so so that's one thing I do. I do love the community, I think it's great. I've tried to be a little more, a little more simple in what I show and the type of content and the types of automations that I show in just trying to reach a broader audience that I think there's no better example than the work that I now do at your table. You know, what I show is usually very, very simple. And I think you know, on a daily basis at AIR table, I have probably reached a reach more people than I have on on in terms of aha moments then then the year plus I spent not not saying that, that that That's a true equivalence. But it's, it's, it's been rewarding to, to myself to be able to show very simple things. And people are like, Oh my God, that's great. Like, you're gonna save me so much time. Oh my god, this is like basic basic functionality. So but but both are valuable.

Ben Tossell  39:22

Yeah. And it's something that I struggle with too and thinking, like,

39:28

Why? Why is one building that for its own sake. And then often I see like these complex things built for that same community sort of stays in the loop where I'm like, No, let's try and tell everyone about the benefits of notebooks. It is it's that job to be done that we're trying to get to, and care if it's like, you type in without code or no code in the middle of it. It's just that n bit that we're trying to get to, but I think it's just always going to be something that is Like a side effect, a good one, I think which is like, okay, now you can go and build something really simple or really complex. It's just a matter of how you figure out whether there's content there. And whether you can figure out how to do that. I do we're going to build it because just because they can, like, when I was looking at a product term, it would sometimes get me down. I'm like, there's a 15th dating app I've seen this week is Oh, there's like, another weather app. And I've had like, there's a run running joke of Ben hates every weather app. And it was like, you could never please me if you saw something like that. And so some of the time I've just, like, be really just like, for no real big reason other than I just thought, why can't people if you've got the ability to build something, build something more meaningful? I think and, but equally, it's like, well, if you're building something that like helps you learn something or you get something out of it, like good Whatever the fuck you want, like, that's not my thing to tell anyone about, like, Well, I think about it.

Aron - Airtable  41:07

And yeah, and it, I think this is the challenge, like, ultimately come back to the initial point like do do what you enjoy and no code and and and I think, you know it's this and I think Lacey once said like who cares and i and i was like i care but you know frankly I that's fine like if like I spent way too much time thinking about you know why am I creating this for whom am I creating this but I think ultimately that you know, the more the better in I think as people create you know you get to a point you say okay, well okay now that now that I do enjoy doing this what you know what is the next step here? So, you know, for me it's always been okay, well this is interesting. This is fun. To me, but how does it reach more people? And usually what that is, is do something simpler. Or, you know, don't word it in a way where you're talking about how to do multi reference zap reference fields in in web flow through Zapier. But what is the goal of that? Well, that's like multi product, like being able to multi categorize products and create landing pages by category. That's a more relevant struggle for most people, then how do i do like, right, so so backing up and saying, what is it that we're solving? And is what I'm showing? And what I'm what I'm talking about the the actual issue that people are facing, right? So when you step back, and you say, Actually, I want to create a page for each category? Well, you know, as a peer and multi reference fields might be one solution, but are there simpler ones or other other ones and for me, that's really been a good way of Same Okay, well, don't show the the automation show the goal. And maybe there are three four different ways of doing that. And pick the simpler ones.

43:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I saw that. All listen to that podcast with Lacey saying like, Who cares what it's called? And I'm with you and I'm like, I do care what it's called. But also I'm with Lacey and think Well, yeah, why do I care that much? I feel like after like spend mental energy on the fact that I'm annoyed people call it no code. Like, it was fucking like,

43:32

it doesn't right. But here we are.

Aron - Airtable  43:34

Yeah, we are spending spending precious minutes were like meta, we're not even talking about like, the name itself. We're talking about should we talk about the name? And like, you'll never find someone more interested in these conversations than myself. Right? Like I can. I spend probably more time thinking about these things, then, you know, is generally acceptable, right? No one should spend this much time thinking about this. Like there's so many drafts of my newsletters I've never sent around thinking of, you know, why do we do this? Why do we think that way? And so I think there's a great balance, like people don't care. And that's great. And then people like you and myself who do care. I'm in there's a good mix. So ultimately, I think it works out in the end.

44:18

Yeah, I think it's fine. I think I only cared because I just worry about what it's going to be called in acne years when it is more popular. I don't want this to be necessarily this thing.

Aron - Airtable  44:28

But like, maybe, maybe we'll end on this, like, outside of our Twitter world. No, good doesn't mean anything. Right. So and in like, you know, I was thinking about this, like, I have colleagues who are just amazing, amazing, quote, unquote, no coders, they don't ever use that word. You'll never find that on their CV. In, you know, when I speak to other, you know, maybe no code startups or things like that. I'm saying don't don't don't don't target Nokia Code folks, try to find people who have the underlying characteristics of a no clutter. So people who need to automate who have a goal usually that goal might be marketing might be process, workflow, wizards or whatever. Don't use the word wizards. And so, ultimately, it'll never I don't think they'll ever call themselves no coders because no, no code isn't a goal in and of itself. Yeah, right. So it's, it's about what is it? What is their job? Their job is usually marketing, its processes. its its its operations. But, you know, the people I work with are the people who, you know, who haven't heard of our world are just amazing at it. I show them parabola and they're like, Oh, my God, within three days of coming back into like, Look at, look at the eight things I've done in it. But they don't go on Twitter. They don't do these things. And so, you know, I think of those folks, and how do we help We keep reaching those those people and keep pushing our world forward and whether we call it no code or not. They'll never call it no code.

46:12

Which which I think is good.

46:14

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And yeah, let's end it there I think been awesome conversation as always, where can people go and find you online?

Aron - Airtable  46:27

Yeah, so Best Places Twitter, despite my knocking of it, Aaron core AR o n k or on Twitter. You can find the Essential Guide to air table@att.io automate all the things acronym I can't afford that domain. And, yeah, otherwise, you know, air table comm slash webinars. That's what we're doing short term. I'm pretty easy to find online. I had to automate all the things YouTube channel, so So yeah, feel free Reach out. Um, yeah, thanks. Thanks to you, Ben for taking the time and Archie, take last moment to thank you for, you know, I don't think I would be where I am today, whatever that means, if if you hadn't reached out So remember, a little backstory here, maybe we'll end here. I remember writing to Ben after I wrote the Essential Guide to air table and saying, Hey, you know, a part of why I created that was, you know, thanks to Ben's tweets and I didn't know Ben at that moment, he actually responded and that's how a lot of this maker pad stuff started or to me joining me keypad anyway, so huge thanks to you. And thanks for everything you do for the community

47:42

of really big data. Thanks so much.

Ben Tossell  47:46

Thanks so much for listening. You can find us online at maker pad.co or on Twitter at make Pat we'd love to hear if you enjoyed this episode. I want to do next

‍