[CTQ Smartcast] How should you think about No-Code? With Max Haining
Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysOfNoCode, which is an educational and community platform with a vision to democratise software creation by helping people build websites and apps without code. Max started 100DaysOfNoCode to learn it himself and little did he know that there were more people like him wanting to join him on a similar journey.
This Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, is a great opportunity to understand no-code, its trends and how building a community can help one learn something better.
Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
The importance of a cohort for building a habit
Why are gradation and curation vital in a project?
Why is it critical to set an outcome or a target?
The importance of a community and building a community
Role of social media in running a community
PLUS
The notion of building in public and the future of no-code
AND
Max at the Wimbledon
LINKS TO THE WEBSITE, PEOPLE AND PODCASTS MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
WEBSITE
PEOPLE
Karthik Puvvada, Program Director, On Deck
Sharath, Community Programs Manager, Product Hunt
PODCAST
My First Million by The Hustle
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like The Role Of MOOCs In Staying Future Relevant, With Kapeesh Saraf
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish Kumar: Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysOfNoCode. Like any other good, useful product, he started 100DaysOfNoCode to learn No Code himself and realised that more people like him wanted to join him on a similar journey. We spoke about habit formation, compounding of knowledge, taking advantage of a community to learn something better. Max also spoke about the trends in no code, its limitations and how entrepreneurs and non-tech founders should be thinking about no code and low code. If you are curious about No Code or want to learn about community building, you will absolutely love this chat. We also talked about his experience at Wimbledon. Remember to subscribe to our show on whatever platform you are getting this on, that way you’ll get notified when we publish a new episode and we do have many interesting guests lined up for you.
00:01:13
Harish: Hi Max, welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:01:17
Max Haining: Hi, thanks so much for having me. Really looking forward to getting into some good topics today.
00:01:22
Harish: Let’s jump in straight away. Can you briefly talk about the whole philosophy behind 100DaysofNoCode? What is it all about?
00:01:31
Max: Of course. Essentially it’s all about habit building and systems behind learning a new skill that happens to be no code. There are so many different 100-day challenges out there in the world for cooking, writing, gaming, coding or whatever you want for that matter. It’s a proven way. If you learn anything for 100 days, you are probably going to be quite good at it. But I think where the interesting thing comes in is the compounding effects of doing it every day. One day adding on top of the next, that’s where the key-value lies but there’s some subsidiary, additional benefits of doing a 100 days and part of the philosophy is sharing what you are learning. That all ties into the whole building public movements and being able to share your story and let other people in on that story as you learn, grow, develop new skills. That’s the whole philosophy of the 100 days but that’s where it’s come from. It’s essentially got 3 rules to it - do 30 minutes of no coding learning every day for 100 days, share what you are learning every day on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever platform you are using, and before you do both of those things, make sure you publicly commit to actually doing that challenge for 100 days. This is a perfect driver to hold yourself accountable because you can’t really back out if your friends know that you are doing this thing.
00:03:24
Harish: Right. That’s fantastic Max. So how did you stumble upon this? Was this a culmination of a bunch of things you had tried out? What was your inspiration for doing this?
00:03:34
Max: Sure. Rather ironically, after university, I was working on finding various boot camps, educational resources to help me learn to code. That was something I was really keen to do because I worked on some startups before that one of the key reasons or failings behind them was that none of them had technical co-founders. This kind of planted a seed in my mind, I wanted to become technical and that’s when I started looking at wanting to learn to code. That was the only means to do that at the time. This is 2018-19. I stumbled across a tweet or an article by Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt who delved into the rise of no-code. I was thinking what the hell is this? This weird space. I went to check it out and that’s when my eyes were opened to this. At the time it was a very early space but also a very exciting one that promised essentially a lot of things around being able to build without having to learn to code. That kind of changed my thinking and after a while I delved deeper into the space and tried to learn it, tried to get my toes wet into the space. But actually, I found it difficult because I didn’t know what to learn, what tools to pick, I didn't have a structure for learning. So I kind of dipped in and out and didn’t make any progress. I was just flailing and that’s when the pandemic hit, March of last year. We suddenly had a lot more time on our hands, we were locked in our rooms and that’s when I realised that this is the perfect time to learn a new skill. I want to learn to no code but I still don’t have the structure for it. That’s when I combined the 100 days of code challenge which I had seen and was previously going to take part in, and then just swapped it for no code. I started doing it myself and then other people joined.
00:05:55
Harish: This is fantastic. It resonates a lot with me because at Choose To Thinq, we actually run something called CTQ Compounds. The word compounds come from the whole compounding philosophy. We’ve been helping people read regularly and a lot of elements that you talked about are very similar. People subscribe to this, they sign up, a cohort of 10 people at a time and they read every day. What we aim for is 15 mins of reading. It’s much easier for people to say that I have 15 mins to commit to this. If you tell me to read War and Peace, no I’m not going to read that. But at the end of 6 months, we tell them they’ve read as much as what Tolstoy had written. We see this in action and I’m seeing a lot of things you talked about. The first question that I wanted to ask you with this in the backdrop Max, was about the whole importance of having a cohort. When you are doing something together, you are trying to build a habit. They say that there are two ways of building a habit, either you be a part of a group that is all trying to do that, so you are on the same journey. Or you go and join the group which is already living the kind of life that you want to be leading. Then you look at these people and say you want to do the same thing. Those are the two best ways of forming a habit. Both of us are trying to take the whole journey approach. What is the role of the cohort here, especially in your case where there are people joining in from all over the world, trying to do something around no code?
00:07:56
Max: Sure, really great question. The idea of building a habit, that starts with as you said, making that choice easier. You mentioned about 15 minutes a day for reading a book or doing a bit of reading. That to me is so small that I don’t even have to think about it, that’s easy. Cool, let’s do it, that is how you need to start. Really framing your learning around something that is so easy that it kind of becomes a bit of a no-brainer. That is why we started with the 30 minutes thing. Regardless of whether there may be a cohort or not, if we started with we have to do 10 hours of this a day, it won’t do its job. So it needs to be revolving around something that everyone can do, is sustainable and will still give you enough juice to actually learn that skill. That’s where it starts but gradually where the cohorts come in to play for 100 days is essentially the momentum it gives you. In a sense that you are all in this together, therefore if you are having a struggle one day or you are not moving as quickly as you like. There’s always someone ahead of you or behind you that you can look up or down to, who can help you out at that moment. But in terms of cohorts, so at the moment it is not just your side. Because we actually work on a rolling basis so people join and start anytime they like. But where the full effects of a cohort-based model come in is the community that we have alongside people just starting and finishing their 100 days. We have a group of people learning and doing the same thing just maybe not on the same time scale. That’s where the sprinkling of cohorts comes into play. But essentially what we are looking at doing is setting everyone off, pressing this starting gun at the same time for everyone and seeing how that works. You’re right, that could be even more powerful.
00:10:28
Harish: Right. Something that we’ve introduced is some elements of rewards and penalties as part of the group, because if you don’t read it actually results in a group penalty. It’s much more difficult to let down the group than just doing it for yourself. But of course, it does impose the restriction that you have to start that as part of a cohort. So we have both cohort-based and non-cohort based groups. That’s been something that’s very interesting. I’d be really interested to know how your experience with these kinds of cohorts goes in the future?
00:11:15
Max: Yeah, of course. Happy to share any insights. I think that’s such a good idea. Group based penalty, may seem harsh but it reminded me of this thing called ‘fret petting’, which is essential that you can get your enrollees, your students to pay double the amount of the actual price of the course and then if they don’t finish it, they have to pay double if they finish, they’ve to pay the normal price. Again, they are playing with those incentives and I haven’t done that yet, I don’t know if they’ll like me if I do that. That’s definitely something to think about.
00:11:55
Harish: Sure. Another thing that you mentioned which struck me was the whole curation bit. Again, this is coming from our own experience where people trust us with the curation. Yes, I’m saying that I’m going to give you my 15 minutes, you need to make sure that whatever you send to me for reading is worth my 15 minutes. Similarly, it’s very important for you to make that right kind of gradation when it comes to learning about no code because if you are going to give me something very tough the first 5-6 days, I’m going to get dejected and say this is not for me. How do you make sure that the gradation and curation are as it should be for a project like this?
00:12:42
Max: Really great question. I think it’s really difficult because people enter all different levels, they have all different goals and especially something like no code, there are so many tools. There are new tools released every week, which adds to the number of variables and the number of options at play, which makes it harder to curate because you are always trying to double guess the path that most people will get the most from versus multiple paths that different personas get the most from. I think when you are starting a project, you have to lay out one path and then as you scale it you’ve to probably become more precise for those different personas. What we’ve done is taken the first principles and have taken the fundamentals of no coding learning rather than being tool-agnostic, to shifting it back to actually what does no coding learning means? What skills do I have to learn regardless of the tool, those include data-based design, UI/UX, API knowledge, before even touching the tools. But also it’s nice to give people the option to curate their own journey to an extent. To give that sense or set of options but not too much where they start to feel paralysed. Again, it’s tricky. “Oh, today you can learn this or this,” but you can’t say today you can learn one of these 10 things. There are a few things that play in curating for sure.
00:14:35
Harish: Right. When you are talking about different personas in your experience, what are the different personas you are seeing when taking 100DaysofNoCode?
00:14:48
Max: Yeah, good question. No code does appeal to a certain sort of person but it also could have a massive appeal to the number of use cases, it can be useful. But for the stage it’s at in the movement, in the space, it’s definitely appealing to entrepreneurs. 70% of no coders are entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs. That is kind of the key persona. But now we are seeing startup operators and big organisations and companies wanting to leverage no code for automation, optimisation within organisations. I think there are entrepreneurs, companies and small startups that want the information to train their staff. Then you have the creator economy focussed people that are like side project makers who want to put this out for fun. Those are usually free, generally saying at the moment, persona-wise.
00:16:04
Harish: Is there any view that you have on children learning no code? Is it too early for them? Are you denying them the opportunity to go deep into core programming? Is there any thought around that?
00:16:22
Max: Really good question. I think it’s a very interesting space that hasn’t been served too much yet. It’s like one or the other at this stage. “Well, if they start no code, they are not going to be able to go deep into code”. I think it’s probably the opposite. I think it’s the perfect on-ramp into coding if that’s something someone wants to do. That’s a trend I keep seeing that people start to no code, once they hit the limits of this space, they certainly have to cross into the territory of code, low code. No code is a perfect starting point regardless of where a person, kid wants to end up in code or no code. That is certainly something that should be taught in schools and part of the syllabus in universities etc. It should be a fundamental part of any student I think. Yeah, I could see the use case of every degree.
00:17:35
Harish: Yeah. At the other end of the spectrum, you mentioned limitations of no-code or even low code. Do you see no code and low code being used primarily for shipping out a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) or get something working, a prototype so that people understand what an entrepreneur has in his/her mind? Or do you actually see people using this for live products and then you’re probably misusing this where it should not be used? Is that the case? What’re those limitations you are talking about?
00:18:16
Max: Yeah, I’m smiling because it’s definitely like a debate that is ongoing on Twitter and so on. There isn’t one answer to that but I think yes, the main use case for no code in its current form, its limits and what it’s good for is the prototyping, the MVPs and validating the concept that you have. I think it’s perfect for that but that’s not to say that you cannot actually scale up no-code tools. It does again depend largely on the tool you are using - I have different answers to different tools. So if we are talking about the go-to for building web apps and software of services and businesses, then Bubble is probably appropriate to scale up to thousands of users. There’s an app called Coins, a FinTech business that is built purely on Bubble and it got 30-50 thousand users a month, using it. That is just one case and there are more examples like that. But then if you are using many tools, you may want to keep it within the MVP approach type scope. It really depends on what you are using. But the one thing I will say, the more time that space is growing and maturing, the more powerful and scalable things will be. So it may not quite be there yet. But one year, two years, five years down the line they’ll all be scalable.
00:20:05
Harish: Right. That’s on the scalability part but do you have any thoughts or comments on how economical it would be for an entrepreneur, somebody who’s not done coding to start with something like Glide Apps, a Bubble since these have been designed by a no coder. It can be very expensive to run a product on these platforms as well, as compared to probably getting developed by a partner. Is there something like a Goldilocks ratio where for these many users, this is great after which you look for something else?
00:20:49
Max: I wish I had a cast-iron number for you. I really wish I did. But it’s always going to be less expensive at least in the initial period than hiring a developer in terms of the number of users you have. Until you move the ship and you go fully coded, I think that’s a judgement call on that business because they may have a road map that just goes beyond the limit of no code. But if it doesn’t I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t stay within no code. From an economics point of view, these platforms are on a monthly basis, a month or yearly. The price list I’ve seen looks like about 70-80 dollars a month which really isn’t that much if you have a decent number of users. If you do it with code regardless of whether you are going to have the cost of development, you are going to have the ongoing costs of hosting and all that stuff that no-code platforms do for you. It’s a judgement call really on that business at that point. But I think no code is pretty economical. It will get more expensive though if you are combining lots of tools, then you have multiple subscriptions going on in the background.
00:22:26
Harish: That’s something to think about for entrepreneurs as well. Not to go blind to the no code. Another question that I had, Max, was that this whole notion about starting with an end outcome in mind. If you have a project or a product idea, to me it comes very naturally and it comes easy to figure what it is going to take for me to go to that outcome. I’ve not done any coding in my life but created a code in visual basic 20 years ago to implement an algorithm. Then I have done Glide Apps, Airtable, Bubble etc. only when I’ve had the use case clear to me. But if you were to tell me, just go and learn the fundamentals of XYZ, I’m going to start a couple of days and then my interest is going to wane. That’s a notion, what is your comment on that?
00:23:36
Max: When I analyse the people who make the most of 100 Days or learn no code in the best way, definitely who’s gotten an outcome-driven approach, who normally have a project in mind. I think there definitely are those people who come in without a project and it makes that learning process more aimless as there is no target in mind. But if you go into it without a project, you know you’ll eventually have one then the information you are picking up isn’t useless. Just not maybe as quickly as if you had a project that was ready to be made. So yeah if you are one of those people who is curious about the space, want to pick up these tools and have no project in mind, have no intention of building anything later down the line, then I would give you a set of project ideas to work on and offset that to effect. Looking to build a marketplace or directory, or a landing page, something in that which gives yourself an outlet.
00:25:01
Harish: Right. That makes a lot of sense to have some kind of an outlet in mind. So, Max, it’s been 1.5 years since you’ve been running this?
00:25:14
Max: Yeah.
00:25:16
Harish: Tell me some memorable experiences, anecdotes with the whole community that you have been helping.
00:25:24
Max: As a community manager, community building is tough. In a sense, it is something that you really have to give your all in to show your commitment to the community. So it’s not for the faint-hearted or for those that want to build a community without building a community. With that investment and time, you really look for those highlights, those things to look back on as that was really worth me pushing this person this extra little way to get a project done. I always enjoy our quarterly demo days so it’s a chance for members to kind of push out all the projects which they’ve been working on heads down for a few months’ time. Those are really nice because one. They showcase a variety of no codes. We’ve got people building speech therapy apps, purely voice-based and someone is literally talking to his phone and based on his responses, it tells or instructs him to do a different exercise. That is such a niche example but it’s so wholesome because it is serving such a niche problem and helping lots of people in turn. So I guess the answer to this question is, there isn’t something that sticks out, it’s just seeing the realisation of someone’s idea come to life. That happens a lot if you are using no code. Seeing the reactions and the ‘aha’ moment that “Oh, I can build this and it can be a tangible thing that for people to use,” is really nice to see.
00:27:26
Harish: Yeah, and when was the ‘aha’ moment for you when you saw that this is like a product in itself? Doing some meta-thinking around this.
00:27:40
Max: Yeah, it’s funny. It wasn’t ever meant to be a product, it wasn’t ever meant to be a community. It was my selfish endeavour to just learn this skill over 100 days. It’s funny because the reason why I started the project was to build an online running community for runners. And now, look how it’s turned out. It’s a no-code community. Never would have anticipated that. I think the ‘aha’ moment was, initially the people as I said openly on Twitter, “I’m starting this today, if you want to join me, please do. I would love the support and inspiration of others doing it at the same time. But if not, I’m going to do it anyway” And people joined and committed themselves on the first day. I had no followers or anything on Twitter, even when I posted it. It still got a decent chunk of engagement. That was my first indicator that people seem to resonate with this, this is exciting. Then I think it was day 50 of my journey when I turned from learning no code or trying to be a no-code builder to then swapping and being a community builder. So I never technically finished my 100 days really. I did finish it but I was more working on it than actually learning these skills in my second 50 days.
00:29:26
Harish: Let’s discuss this later if you want to edit this part out.
00:29:33
Max: Yes.
00:29:37
Harish: But jokes apart, this is a fantastic story. It is a great example of how you are solving a problem for yourself and in the process, you realise that so many people have the same problem. Now they are part of your journey. So now that you have moved on to running the community, did you get any insights? As you said it is not for the faint-hearted, did you get any insights or learning on running a community? What are the tools that help you do a good job of running a community?
00:30:12
Max: Yeah, great question. I think the bottom line is it can be super generic advice but what I found is, you’ve to show up every day. In the sense, replying to the Slack messages, sharing resources, checking in on people if you feel like they are losing their way on their journey. Having that kind of peripheral knowledge, where people are on that journey, what help they will need. I know there are tools that help you do that. Community CRMs are now a thing. So you’ve got an old bit model, like Airtable obviously which lets you do a good job with that anyway. So fundamentally, it’s basically you showing up every day and you have the knowledge related to how to help people and when. It comes from the tooling a little bit. I can look at my database and say this person is on this day X and let me just go and cheer him up and say congratulations, good job on completing day 50. I think that’s my fundamental lesson. I’d sprinkle that with making sure that you are not building for the community, you are building with it. At the start, I was like a top-down approach of let’s just add this thing over the other without really understanding why people would want or need it. That’s when I started trying to build with. What are your pain points? What is stopping you from getting to day 50? And then building around those insights. Then just to wrap up this answer, I think some of the tools I’ve used have been helpful which include Grain.co for taking highlights from Zoom recordings and being able to share them, especially useful for a global community because people would never be able to come to the same event, at least if it’s live. I can share some more with you for the listeners after this chat.
00:32:31
Harish: Sure, we’ll link them in the show notes as well. So one more question came to mind. You said that you didn’t have a lot of followers on Twitter but people got attracted to the notion and they joined you. How important do you think it is to have a social capital around what you are doing to initiate a community like this or having that weight around yourself as a community manager? How important is it these days to be working on your social capital as well?
00:33:11
Max: Yeah, I think it is pretty big. I’ve always been lucky really, coming in at the right time, in the middle of a pandemic people needed a channel, an outlet to do something else just popping up on one person’s feed and then liking and retweeting it, to have a large following. I think I was lucky in a way and I definitely would not rely on luck next time if I was doing it again. Try and build a steady following who trust me, believe in what I post and have that relationship with me, then share something. Whether that is a code show building, business or even you are starting, having that following just immeasurable helps in any kind of doing, especially if you are giving value to them every day because they always or more likely going to want to reciprocate that down the line when you have the ask. For me, that ask would be to come to join the 100 days of no-code and for others, it could be anything else.
00:34:18
Harish: Continuing with this, do you think building a community of your own is going to be a lot more common and mainstream now, given that people have different kinds of interests and they want to build that brand or community around themselves to believe in?
00:34:36
Max: Yeah, that’s a brilliant question. I haven’t really explored that topic much about building your own community around yourself. I’ve not looked into it much but I see more and more people doing that on Twitter. They’ve not called it a community but there’s a community that revolves around that person, who answers their questions, retweets and shares their things. They are essential members of that person’s community in a way. Never really thought about it that much but I think it is important and that is always a good starting point before maybe starting your own community or under a different brand or doing something else. Trust, especially online, is so important when people haven’t met you in person. If you can cultivate that, it should go a long way.
00:35:34
Harish: It all boils down to the word that you used - Trust. I know that Max was at Wimbledon once because I’ve been following you on Twitter. So tell me more about that experience. It’s got nothing to do with no coding but in my mind now, you’ve suddenly been raised on a pedestal.
00:36:03
Max: This is like, again, I hadn’t really done much of this. But sharing a bit about you and who you are as well. That is the first post I had done in ages which were a bit more personal rather than just community building advice or tips and tricks of using Slack or something. I think it caught people off guard but they just really enjoyed it because it was so different. They were like, “Oh, I’m learning something new about that person”. In terms of Wimbledon, I used to be a ball boy and when I was 13-14 just chasing after balls, it was really fun. You got to see all the top players and when I got too old for that, they asked would you want to now cover the courts when it rains, you obviously see a lot of rain in the UK. So that job was pretty necessary. Then I covered the courts and when it was sunny, I would be holding the umbrellas for the players to make sure that they weren’t battered by the heat. It was a fun job and now when Wimbledon is on, I’m not sure if I’d want to go back to it but it’s a nice memory to have.
00:37:36
Harish: And which years were you at Wimbledon?
00: 37:41
Max: I was in 2012, 2013 and 2016-2019. A good chunk of years actually, now that I think about it.
00:37:54
Harish: Nice. You were there during the finals or?
00:38:00
Max: Yeah. You kind of picked based on your abilities. But when I was a ball boy, I wasn’t really good. So I wasn’t ever doing the finals or the big games. I would appear on some nice courts but never the big matches. That was reserved for the quickest and the fastest ones. I did the court attending and covering for a few finals, just kind of holding the umbrellas. It was quite funny. So if anyone wants an umbrella holder, you know where I am.
00:38:47
Harish: And do you play tennis?
00:38:50
Max: Yes, I do. Again, not very well but just for enjoyment.
00:38:57
Harish: You’ll of course be biased with the benchmarks that you have set for yourself.
00:39:00
Max: Yeah. It’s actually funny. You are actually watching the players solidly for two weeks and you think I’m going to be really good at tennis after this. I watched through their technique and stuff. Then you try to replicate the technique and you are even worse than before. It’s just so sad.
00:39:27
Harish: That’s a very useful tip I guess. Thanks. One interesting thought that came to mind when you mentioned this, the whole notion of building in public. Look at these sportspeople. They are actually struggling and failing, in most cases losing. Even Federer has lost more matches than he has won in his life. So are there any parallels that you draw between how a sports person goes about doing their job and building in public notion?
00:40:08
Max: It’s a brilliant question, I hadn’t thought about it like that at all. You are right, they are actually building in public without actually knowing that they are building in public. They are all there and I know that most of them have got good media teams. But ultimately when they are at their most vulnerable is showing their abilities when they are on the court. You say the highs and the lows, but it’s probably more lows in a tennis career. That I guess for any sport really. Losing in public is tough I can imagine and see that emotion and what it does to a person is probably again a part of the fans resonating with that person even more because they can relate to that. It happened to Andy Murray in 2012, he lost the final that year and then he was distraught, upset and people really felt that. They felt those tears and then he won it the next year. That’s a perfect example of building public really.
00:41:27
Harish: That’s a great parallel to draw from the world of sports with building in public. So, a final couple of questions, Max. What’s your vision for no code and how do you see it enabling people in the future? All kinds of people from all walks of life?
00:41:47
Max: Yeah, I feel like at the moment it has not even scratched the surface of what it is capable of doing, how many lives it can impact. It still firmly is in the tech bubble so it’s in a space where most people know this lingo, know what building public means. It still feels restrained to that space. There have been exceptions to that but I’m really keen to help move it beyond this bubble. To educate more people whether it’s kids or young people, university students or people in different industries than tech. But essentially, one is to raise awareness on what no code is, why it should be used, why you should be excited by it. But also educating people on leveraging it for their own lives and to help others as well. I feel like there’s a lot of work to be done to naturally realise the whole excitement behind no code which is democratising software development. It does do that but if it wants to do that not just on a scale of millions of people but billions, then we really need to start spreading the word. I think that’s on a very general level, what I’m keen to do is get more people using it.
00:43:24
Harish: To make that a reality, what would you recommend for people to have in terms of the right mindset for learning? How should they be thinking about learning? I click on a tweet and I like it, there are lots that is going on behind it. How do you start thinking about things like this?
00:43:49
Max: I’d say if you are entering no code or learning a new skill, especially in the no-code sense, I would certainly lower expectations than what all the marketing say. Don’t expect to build a website in 5 minutes off the bat. Slow down, take a breath and understand that it will work. It’s a skill to be learnt, it’s not something you can just pick up and you are there. I think being patient in the process of learning is key. Then making sure as we live by 100 days, making sure to share that knowledge as other people can connect to your journey while also sharing in such a way that you are embedding what you’ve just learnt. As we touched upon earlier in this chat, making sure that you have an outlet for that knowledge. Now that you have shared the knowledge, what are you going to do with it? Optimise for creation over consumption every time. Because that’s a trap that I fell into and so many do. “Oh I’ve just watched a YouTube video, it’s just perfect. I’ve taken in lots of knowledge.” What are you going to do about it? That’s probably a message I’d like to, on the learning front, try to leave people with a bit.
00:45:16
Harish: If you just look at the whole 100DaysofNoCode, do you think we can think of it as a blueprint for learning anything? Not just no code but if you apply these principles, that is something that can be applied to anything or any topic?
00:45:34
Max: I think the framework is so simple yet powerful that yeah, it could be applied to actually anything really. What is useful about it is, we touched upon it, although it’s so small with the kind of daily input you’ve to give, it’s almost a no-brainer. The flipside or addition to that is having just 30 minutes a day means it is accessible to lots of people. Everyone’s got jobs, families, got things to do, 30 minutes a day is accessible to lots of people, that can be sliced out of their schedule. Another very interesting thing about it is its accessibility. People who are busy can actually do it as well. I think people can get lost in that like oh my gosh, it’s 100 days. It’s not really, it’s 2 days if you are up for 30 minutes spread over 100 days, that’s what makes it. That also means you are building momentum and you are not just learning something all at once. You are learning it progressively, incrementally over time and at the endpoint, you are all skilled, you will fully reach the combined effects of that as well.
00:46:56
Harish: Right. Do you see this being appealing for people who have never coded, who have reached a certain stage in their career where they are not founders, entrepreneurs or don’t have a product idea? But they are going to hit a ceiling very soon in terms of their career progression. Do you see no code or something like a 100-day challenge of no code being the right kind of trigger for them to potentially start a new career or a new line in their career?
00:47:30
Max: It’s tricky to know. It’s hard to know. But I saw this tweet the other day - “Just gave a presentation on no-code and he made me realise that we need more people to know about no code.” Someone said - “I’ve tried to tell my friends and they are just not interested.” I guess there will always be people like that. It’s just a question of how many people like that and whether no code is only for creators, entrepreneurs, I don’t know yet. But I certainly feel that if you are intentionally looking for creating or to amp up their skillset, then no code is like future-proofing them, like useful regardless. They don’t need to be creating startups or side projects with it. You should just be automating that manual task they’ve got on their plate. It just reduces time, giving them enough 30 minutes every week. Something as small as that they can apply no code with, it’s about positioning themselves as well and how you position it for all the audiences and making it more appealing as well.
00:48:50
Harish: I mentioned the Daily Reader Programme in CTQ Compounds, we’ve something called the Future Stack which is about reading for professional growth for future relevance. We have 26 different themes across 26 weeks and one of the themes is actually No Code and Low Code. We’ve had people with backgrounds like HR who are told by their leaders that you need to do something with AI and ML. they’ve absolutely no clue as to what to do with it. And for them, it’s a great start. One week primer on what low code is and they can potentially go ahead. They at least now understand the language that they need to speak with a person from a tech company to develop something for them. But they feel a lot more confident so that was where I was coming from.
00:49:47
Max: Yeah, that’s really good to know that people are doing that. And even people who know the same language is, as you said, really important.
00:50:02
Harish: Final question, Max, what would you recommend in terms of people to follow, books to read, podcasts to listen for someone who is inspired by you and wants to get started in the whole world of technology and no code.
00:50:21
Max: I would say get on Twitter and curate your feed very carefully. When I started Twitter, I was very much dismissive of “Oh, it’s just people talking politics, I don’t want or need that in my life.” But actually, it’s full of interesting people if you follow them and unfollow those annoying political people. Then the question comes, who is that? We’ve actually got a list of no coders to follow in our beginners’ course, just going to lead with what’s on the top of my head. I would first follow KP (@thisiskp_), Sharath, he’ll be followed by KP. Those two leaders in this space and if you check who they are following, you’ll get a pretty good idea of who to follow. Check who I’m following to an extent but mine has also got some sporting accounts in there so it’s intermixed with sort of rubbish. Don’t do that yourself, that's the first thing to do. Then you start absorbing interesting things, projects being launched, tips of no coding every day on your phone which is good. In terms of podcasts, I recently started My First Million podcast that’s just useful from the point of an idea of the view. If you just want to close the loop, get inspiration, You are learning no code now and need some ideas, that podcast is full of them that can connect with your skills hopefully.
00:52:19
Harish: One more final question, what happens after 100 days?
00:52:24
Max: Yeah, the magical and the mystical. It’s funny because people almost think it’s like a spiritual experience once you finish the 100 days. But what happens after 100 days is a few things. From the programme, people essentially become like alumni. They take up more leadership positions in the community and get to share their knowledge more, develop the community on their own more. You take that path but actually when people finish the 100 days, the tangible outcomes are generally, people start to become or make money as freelancers in the no-code space. 100 days is plenty of time to be a no-code freelancer and make that your part-time or full-time job. They have built that business or project and now it’s time to validate, get customers so that often more happens. Or they just hang around and stay in spite and make sure that they are still up to speed with the space so when they need it, they can access that knowledge for the next big thing they are working on.
00:53:50
Harish: Yeah, I think that was great, Max, of close to 45 minutes of conversation with you. We wish you all the best, it’s a great initiative that you have got there and you seem to have got all the components of the blueprint right. I hope more and more people join. All the best for your tennis as well.
00:54:20
Max: Thanks so much! It’s been a lot of fun. I really appreciate all the questions. Looking forward to listening back. Thank you.