We are fortunate to have a vibrant community of hundreds of members from all different places across the globe. We come together to talk about tools, tech, no-code and new ways to make creating & building even more productive than before. 

At Makerpad we love sharing our member’s journey through learning no-code, using new skills in their workplaces, building projects and even launching businesses. 

Each week we’ll be highlighting a member from our community and sharing their story, background and previous projects through our Member Spotlight blog post series.

This week we are chatting to Brittany Berger who is based in Southern California.

Brittany is the Founder of WorkBrighter.co‍

Hey Brittany, great to have you be part of the Member's Spotlight. Can you give us some background on how you got into no-code? How long have you been using no-code tools and what got you first interested?

A class in 11th grade was my introduction to databases. The reason I loved this class was Microsoft Access. It was love at first click. In some ways it predicted my love of Notion!

This class mostly taught us super basic stuff we had already figured out for ourselves, like customizing formatting in Word and Excel. Things about how computer programming worked, but not how to actually program as that was a harder class.

With Microsoft Access suddenly I knew how I could build my own version of Cher's closet software from Clueless! I could see how it'd be possible to create a reference and organization system for my CDs the way I always dreamed of! 

Even at 16, I could see the advantage that databases had over static word documents, notes, and spreadsheets. I saw that they were bringing databases to a new population of people like myself who didn't really know SQL or have access to enterprise software, but needed more than a spreadsheet could offer.

More recently I've been using no-code since around 2013 or 2014. When Instagram stopped showing image previews when you shared your post to Twitter, that was the day I discovered IFTTT, since it was being talked about as a useful workaround. From there I started playing with other apps that let you build similarly structured automations, like Zapier. ‍

Then the obsession just blossomed from there and at the beginning of 2020, I chose no-code as one of the activities I wanted to explore more intentionally and spent more time on. What I love about it is just that it lets you create these workarounds and shortcuts that a lot of people don't even realize is possible.

Using no-code to figure out workarounds and hacks for existing tools is a great introduction to lots of interesting tools. So can you take us through some of no-code projects have you built in the past and what tools did you use for them?

Until 2020 most things I built were just for my personal use, or maybe shared with my existing customers and clients as a fun perk. And everything I build starts as a solution to a problem I'm personally having.

The first thing I built as a product was a blogging planner for book bloggers back in 2015. I had my own book review blog at the time and the workflow is unique from other bloggers, in that each post requires spending hours and hours reading a book before you're able to start writing. ‍Other blog organization tools didn’t really fit the whole process so I tried to fix this with my blogging planner. It was a simple template bundle where you could choose between an Airtable base or spreadsheet, plug in the dates you've committed to publishing reviews, and combine that editorial calendar with a reading schedule to make sure you were finishing books in time to review them. ‍

That inspired the next no-code product I offered starting in 2018, which is also a niche content workflow tool. The Content Remix Planner is another template, this time for Airtable, Notion, or a spreadsheet. It combines content planning, publishing, and repurposing into one workflow, since I noticed that people frequently forget about repurposing their content and need to start building it into their processes.‍

Also in 2018, I launched a membership around intentional productivity and balance, and have created a lot of different workflow elements and templates for that community as well. In 2020 I started turning the most popular one, an energy and mood tracker, into a web app using no-code.

Taking digital products through a series of iterations is a great way to expand on an idea and growing it into a larger product. So let's bring things up to the current day, what are you currently working on and what stage is it at?

The main no-code projects I'm focusing on now are The Content Remix Planner, which should be reaching 100 customers pretty soon. For a while I felt too busy with other things to actively promote it, but it has become the flagship product in my consulting business as I've moved away from done-for-you content marketing services. 

So now I'm working on improving the marketing and customer experience around that with things like monthly office hours and more tutorials around using and customizing the tool.

In my other business, WorkBrighter.co, I'm focusing on the brand's first web app that I mentioned above. It's called Energy Sleuth and it helps you to find connections between your energy, mood, and productivity levels so that you can take better care of your self-care and mental health. Right now I have my Work Brighter Clubhouse community members and some friends testing it while I build up the wait list to roll it out to early 2021. Also I’m almost up to the 250th edition of the Work Brighter Weekly Newsletter‍

It’s interesting to see lots of overlap between your different products and how they have been built in similar ways. Thinking more of the future, what are you looking forward to seeing happen in the no-code space in the years to come? 

More options! I know a lot of people find having a bigger selection of tools to choose from overwhelming, and it's easy to get caught up in obsessing over which tool is the "best" one. 

 To me, since everyone's brain works differently and prefers to use tools differently, more options means more people getting into the space because they finally see something they can see themselves understanding.

The no-code community is growing and there’s a lot of opportunity in creating new tools! Do you have a favourite no-code tool? And what's the next no-code tool you're thinking of trying out?

I spend most of my day in Notion and Airtable, so they need to be tied for favorite. I can't choose between my favorite children, haha! 

The next tool I'm learning to use is Glide, where I'm building Energy Sleuth. I've also had an eye on learning more about Bubble too.

Thanks so much for sharing your story with us Brittany. We look forward to hearing more about your journey soon! 

Keep an eye open for our next Member Spotlight blog post coming soon!‍

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