Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What if you could save 12+ hours per week in your business? Being a solopreneur sometimes focuses too much on the “solo” part: doing all the jobs, figuring things out yourself, and spending too much time in your business. But we didn’t start out own solo business to spend all of our time at our desk.
We did it because we want freedom: to travel; to spend time with our family; to watch a movie in the middle of a week day. That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists.
Each week, host Joe Casabona talks about how you can build a better business through smarter systems and automated processes. He does this by bringing on expert guests, and sharing his own experience from years as a busy solopreneur parent — so that being a solopreneur feels…less solo.
With every episode, you'll get insights, great stories, and 1-3 actions you can take today to improve your business processes and spend your time the way you want.
“If it would not be something you want to pursue, I think it would not pop up in your mind to start. Right? But if you thought of it, it might be something that is related to something you already do in your life, in your profession, or something you really enjoy doing, or something you actually want to pursue. And getting back a little bit about the shiny object, if we think about the trends, those are shiny objects. Right? Like, AI is the latest shiny object we have and everyone is pursuing that a bit in, like, you know, maybe in video edition, maybe in podcast edition, maybe creating short clips, like, so many ways you use AI, and some of those will help you, and some of those, you'll be just distraction.” - Karla Fernandes
Joe Casabona: The first documented parachute jump happened in the late 1700s when, and I hope I say this right, Andre-Jacques Garnerin jumped from balloons at only 2000 feet. He no doubt prepared for this moment, testing his parachute and doing everything he could to mitigate risk.
Today, skydiving is a sport and a recreational activity with a lot of safety measures and technology to further mitigate risk.
Why am I telling you this? Because human beings are, by and large, risk-averse…so doing everything we can to reduce it is incredibly important. When it comes to launching a business, it, much like skydiving, is a lot less risky than it was 200 years ago.
Part of that is the ability to create applications and therefore launch software-based businesses without code. That's exactly what Karla Fernandes is going to talk to us about today, and she should know. She's launched over a dozen native apps in the app store, all without writing a single line of code.
Look for these top takeaways.
- When evaluating business ideas, prioritize those that serve you best and gauge interest through pre-sales and feedback from friends, ensuring a user-centric approach and ensuring viability.
- Use no-code tools for faster product development, which allow you to validate, test, and iterate quickly. - With no-code solutions, you can test multiple product ideas at the same time without significant investment, allowing you to hedge your bets and validate several ideas quickly and affordably.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Karla, and I think you are too.
If you are a solopreneur with an idea for a software product, but you don't want to hire a team to code it yet, this episode is definitely for you. And in the pro show, Karla and I walk through the process of writing a no-code application for this podcast. So if you wanna hear that episode and every episode extended and ad-free, you can become a member over at [howibuilt.it/join]. Or if you're listening in Apple Podcasts, you could subscribe right in the app. All of the show notes will be in the description for this episode or over at [howibuilt.it/414]. But for now, let's get to the intro and then the interview.
Hey, everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps busy solopreneurs and creators grow their business without spending too much time on it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and each week, I bring you interviews and case studies on how to build a better business through smarter processes, time management, and effective content creation. It's like getting free coaching calls from successful solopreneurs. By the end of each episode, you'll have 1 to 3 takeaways you can implement today to stop spending time in your business and more time on your business or with your friends, your family, reading, or however you choose to spend your free time.
Joe Casabona: All right. I am here with Karla Fernandes. Karla is a Digital Product Designer, consultant, and mentor, and I'm super excited to talk about no-code strategies, but let's start at the beginning. Solopreneurs, well, first of all, Karla, thanks for being here.
Karla Fernandes: No. It's amazing to be here. You have no idea how much happy I am.
Joe Casabona: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I'm really excited to talk to you. And so, now let's dive into it now that we've exchanged niceties. Solopreneurs have shiny object syndrome. How can we combat that? I'm just starting, like coming out hot. Right? Like, how can we combat shiny object syndrome?
Karla Fernandes: This is hot indeed. I do agree with you. That is so nice when you haven't just got an idea and you want to pursue it. And it may interfere with whatever you are doing already. So, I would say that the best way for us to avoid the shiny object, it is really to think about prioritizing. And I do have a list with, thousands of ideas and I am sure you have some ideas that you want to pursue more than others. So try to be mindful of your time and also evaluate what you give, what you are looking for.
So, here, my point is, if you got an idea that you feel like a hobby and nobody will pay you for doing that, it might be not the best for you right now if you are looking to have some money in your bank account. So, you have to evaluate those points and get this list.
I did recently read this $1,000,000 Weekend from Noah Kagan, and I really love the way that he talks about ideation and how to evaluate if the idea is good or not. He says something very simple as, like I may not use exact his words, but I translate to my own, that is something simple as, you get your list of ideas, and then you start calling your friends that you'd be maybe interested in that idea, and then you explain them in a very short pitch what the idea is about, what you are going to do, and how much it costs. And in there already, request the money for this person. So you just call someone and say, like, you know, I have this idea that you, it will be for entrepreneurs, like, I'm talking about being a team of 1. I want to create a club around it, and I want everyone to join and to learn more how to build things altogether. Would you be interested? Oh, they would say, like, yes or maybe not. If they say yes, you say, like, okay. Great. So this EOB, like, $20 a month. Can you already transfer the 1st month for me in my account now? Then I put you on my list next week.
Joe Casabona: Wow. That's really interesting. Right? Because that's like the first part of that. Right? Do you think, this is a good idea is usually not a good research question, right, because people want to, they're people pleasers, and then, like, yeah. I think that's a good idea. But asking people to put money where their mouth is, that's the important part. And so, and that's essentially like a pre-sale too. Right? Like, you put up a pre-sales page, you can kind of validate that idea. I really like that. So that's a $1,000,000 Weekend by Noah Kagan.
I'm, maybe in the pro show, we could talk about this a little bit because I'm always skeptical of books that promise a huge dollar amount in a short amount of time or books that have bad words in the title. I'm just like, if you need to swear to, like, sell, is it really good? So maybe we could talk a little bit about that. I obviously haven't read it, but I'd love to get your perspective on it.
Now, along with that, right, a theme of the last few episodes have been around prioritizing goal setting and validation. In Episode 409, I talked to Tanya Alvarez about prioritizing. In episode 412, I talked to, Gia Laudi about doing research and getting feedback from customers. So, we touched on this a little bit. Right? How do you evaluate a concept or an idea to determine if it works? So, I think Step 1 was determine if it's a hobby or a viable product. Right? And both of those are fine, but if you need to make money, then you can't go the hobby route right now. Right?
Karla Fernandes: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: So let's say that you have an idea, and you're starting to take some of these approaches you mentioned. How do you first determine if it's something that you want to pursue?
Karla Fernandes: Well, if it would not be something you want to pursue, I think it would not pop up in your mind to start. Right? But if you think of it, it might be something that is related to something you already do in your life, in your profession, or something you really enjoy doing, or something you actually want to pursue.
And getting back a little bit about the shiny object, if we think about the trends, those are shiny objects, right? Like, AI is the latest shiny object we have. And everyone is pursuing that a bit in, like, you know, maybe in video edition, maybe in podcast edition, maybe creating short clips. Like, so many ways you use AI. And some of those will help you, and some of those will be just distractions.
So how do you decide if something is just shiny or it really can help your flow without trying? So, I do believe that you have to give a chance to every idea you have, not at the same time. Like you said, prioritizing is really important. So if you do have a list of ideas, come up with what you need for each of them to make them feasible. See if they will just, like, you know, that you invest a lot of time to make it possible or if it will be just the least amount of time. So, or you need to invest money or not invest money? You need to buy something new or not buy something new and kind of evaluate this between the ideas you have and see the one that you can do at that moment in the shortest time without a lot of investment and try it out.
Joe Casabona: I think you raised a couple of really good points here. Right? Because it's, first, I love what you said there. Like, if you didn't think of it, you probably wouldn't wanna pursue it. Right? But, you know, I think that I haven't done this in a long time. I have, like, a zero-sum domain policy. So if I'm buying a domain, I have to get rid of one I'm not using. But I think that anybody, at least, in my position has been there. Right? Like, you get an idea, you buy the domain. Like, I mean, like, that's the first thing that you do. And I realized that most of my domains were just not. I've successfully sold like, 1 or 2, which is cool. Like, I'm glad I was able to do that, but I've definitely lost money on domains.
But then the next question, right, is, is there a big time or cash investment? Because that's really, you're looking at the level of effort. Right? I make fun of this statement a lot. Right? Because I think that people who have made a lot of money online like to oversimplify it to make a lot more money online, but Justin Welsh, Welsh, Justin Welsh, you know, has, like, a LinkedIn post that's like, here's how to make a profitable business in a weekend. Right? And he's like, all you need is a landing page. And I'm like, well, whatever. Like, you're grossly oversimplifying the process. Right? But to validate an idea, maybe all you need is a landing page. Right? Put up a preorder page with, like, a Thrive cart link or like a PayPal link or whatever. Right? This is great if I've presold courses that way or have determined that the course wasn't worth making in one case. So I think that this is a really smart move. Right? I’m gonna have to invest a lot of time in it? Am I gonna have to invest a lot of money in it? How quickly can I validate this idea?
Karla Fernandes: Exactly. And, you know, to your comment on oversimplifying, I think that everyone is simplifying, like, even us, you know, like everyone is able to simplify because we tend to believe that what we have support from, or like our network, our community, the people around us, or the ideas we have, like, they all support us in some way. And when you have already a big audience, things go different for you for sure. Because you have all these many people to do the tests. Right? Like, if you go to Google product, it's much better developed than a small company product because they have millions of users, and those millions of users are giving feedback all the time. And if you are in a small company, this doesn't happen, so your product goes low.
And this is the same for when you want to sell something and then people that have a big audience say, like, oh, it's easy. Yes. It is easy because they already have communication between them and their audience, and they have this big group of people already following them.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is a really great poin ,Aand it's what I've made on the show in the past. Because you know, you do see these big creators. You know, I don't, I really like and appreciate a lot of what Pat Flynn has done, especially for, like, creators in the early days, but, you know, when he launched his Pokemon, I think it was called, like, Deep Pocket Monsters, right, as his Pokemon channel, he started making content like how I got to a 1000000 subscribers super fast. And I'm like, you're skipping Step 1 of be Pat Flynn. Right? Like, you can't possibly take the longer view on this when you already have a huge audience. Right? Like, if you're really popular, then pretty much everything you do can be successful. And I think that's a really important thing to think about and a really important reason to not compare yourself to other people who are so much more established than you. Right? Because you're not playing the same game. Right?
Karla Fernandes: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Karla Fernandes: And with that, I would even say one further, like, not just, if you have this big audience, but, you know, when you have money, money makes money. So when you have influence, influence makes other people following you. So, you know, it's kind of a wheel of saying. Right? Like, if you have one, the others follow. So…
Joe Casabona: Yeah. It's Nathan Barry talks about this a lot. Right? It's a flywheel. Right? You're not starting from completely still. Once the flywheel starts going, it gets easier to push or move because you have other forces in place. And that's really true. Right? Once you have money, money makes money. That's really smart.
Now, you teased at this a little bit, but I do wanna take a quick break before we get into, our next topic. So I'll just say it this way. With information products, it's easy to presell those. Right? Like, I'm gonna record a course. It really just takes me recording the course as long as I have the knowledge, and, like, some skill at at building a landing page, I can do that pretty quickly. But for software products, maybe being a software engineer in a previous life, software development cycle can take a very long time. So, I wanna touch on that when we get back, but first, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.
Sponsor: Look. When you have an online-based business, speed and reliability are the most important aspects of a service. Not far behind that is actually owning the website that your business relies on. When you own your website, you're not subject to an algorithm, changing terms, or accidental shutdowns.
That's why I'm so excited that LiquidWeb is back as a sponsor of How I Built It this year. Their cloud VPS is some of the best-in-class hosting you can get when your business relies on your website. From speed to security and protection to regular backups, with LiquidWeb, you can trust your website will remain in tip-top shape.
Not technically savvy? Don't worry. LiquidWeb offers fully managed hosting, which means they have a team of knowledgeable experts looking after your website for you so you can focus on running your business. If you need fast, reliable, and secure hosting for your business, check out LiquidWeb. Head over to [howibuilt.it/liquidweb], today.
I've had a sordid past with membership platforms. I've never really been happy with one because I've always had to jump through hoops to get things working. Then I found Memberful.
Memberful has everything you need to get your membership program up and running quickly, content gating, newsletters, community spaces, private podcasts, and more. I love the private podcast feature. Since my host doesn't have a payment gateway, I need to figure out a different way to sell it.
Memberful can handle sales and management for me. Plus, you know I love automation, and Memberful integrates with a ton of services. They even have webhooks and support custom apps. It's the central place for every aspect of your membership.
My membership is on pause, but you can bet that when I launch it again, it will be on Memberful. You can get started today for free at [memberful.com/howIbuiltit]. You don't pay until you start collecting payments. That's [memberful.com/howibuiltit]. [memberful.com/howibuiltit].
Hey. Real quick before we get back into the episode, I want to tell you about my free newsletter, Podcast Workflows. If you are wondering how I can successfully run this show, plus two other shows, plus run a business, plus run three children, Podcast Workflows is for you. You will get weekly emails with behind the scenes look at how I produce this show, experiments I am trying with other podcasts, and general advice to start, grow, and monetize your podcast. You'll also have the opportunity to become a member and get ad-free extended episodes of this show as well as bonus content. You can do all of that over at [podcastworkflows.com/join]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/join]. Sign up for FREE, today.
Joe Casabona: And we're back. Okay. So, Karla, I'm gonna ask you the $1,000,000 question here. If I wanna pursue an idea that's more than just an information product, don't I need a team of coders? Like, don't I need to, like, hire at least one coder to write it for me?
Karla Fernandes: Not today. Not anymore. You can just start by yourself. You can, well of course, if you are open to learn, right? And I would hope you are. So if you are open to learn today, there are so many ways that you can start and build your product just yourself. You can think of the name, you can think of the brand, you can buy the domain, go to Porkbun, buy the domain in auction or not. And, you can come back and develop it. So I, as a designer, I would recommend you to think about the design thinking process, which will be simple, like, talk with who you want to be your customer, what they actually wish, see if there is a need for what you are actually trying to build.
Afterward, start to do some wireframes. Try it out. See if that's really useful. See if you have competitors. See what they are doing. Kind of try to make it as simple as possible for you to start. Like, I have a product that, today is not so big, but it has 1500 users, designers, and is a no-code product, but it started just as a simple list of events. So, I just started to add events for designers there, and people started to download it until it arrived at about 1,000. I was like, okay. So I invest a little bit more time on this product because I am seeing that people actually enjoy it. And then I added other features. I like connecting with each other through LinkedIn, talk of see here what other specialists are talking about or which kind of course they did in design to them to arrive where they are, like they are senior. Or also courses, books, and other things that you can do once you leave, for example, your boot camp because now it's fun to be designing. And, of course, I'm glad about that. It's really cool that now everyone wants to be a designer. So, but a lot of people get out of the boot camp without knowing what to do next until they get a job.
And getting a job today as a designer is quite difficult, but as a designer, you can already do so much. Right? Like, you can already design the whole project, design whole app, a whole website. So why not take this step further and develop that without a team? Like, learn these skills, try it out, put it up on the App Store or Google Play Store, or if you want, also do a web app.
And today we are able to do all of that using no-code tools. Like, you know already, like, you are a Developer and you worked with WordPress for so long, and WordPress was the only no-code tool we have for so long time that would build websites.
Today we have Wix, we have Webflow, we have Framer, we have so many, like, I am learning Toddle, that I could build Figma on top of Toddle. So, it is kind of magic. No. You need to learn and you need to spend some time doing that, but it's possible without a team.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I love this. Right? Because you touched on a lot of different areas, but I wanna distill it into this, I think. Because of the existence of no-code tools, we can spend more time validating and designing our idea without a huge time investment. So you can essentially prototype something pretty quickly. And this is, again, something I studied in school, like rapid prototyping, and, like, visual studio or visual basic was like the way to do that back in the day.
Today, it's like open Canva, create a prototype, and then find a no-code tool to help you out. And I've been really bullish on not writing any code for myself since, like, leaving the web development space because I knew that that would hurt my ability to help my potential customers. Right? Because I service podcasters, and not every podcaster is a coder. And so if I say something like, oh, well, you could just do this just like use this code snippet. That's like an insane thing to expect somebody who's never written any code to be able to do. And so I'm very happy to say that I, aside from CSS like a little bit of CSS here and there. Right? I haven't had to write any appreciable code to achieve the things that I want to achieve, and that's I think that's pretty incredible. But for maybe the uninitiated, can you give us, like, a quick definition overview of what no-code is and maybe give us some of your favorite tools for that?
Karla Fernandes: Sure. So no-code is simply what you just said. It is really the ability of building something without the need to write code, to understand how code works. Like, logic is good for everything in life. Right? And I would believe that it's not, it's even useful with no code too.
So the favorite tools, it will depend on where you want to go. Like, you have this path where you create, maybe an Airbnb. Maybe you want to create that. Maybe you create a booking.com. You want to create a marketplace, or you want to do just a simple, your website or your portfolio, then you go to these web tools that are no-code today, and we have so many, like, we still have WordPress. WordPress allows us to do that and of course may not stay the way exactly you want because then you need a template, you need maybe to know a little bit of CSS. So it is an old tool with, like, let's say they innovated too early. And, right now, we have…
Joe Casabona: What a great way to put that. They innovated too early. I'm gonna steal that from you.
Karla Fernandes: Well, you're welcome. So then we have Webflow, we have Framer, we have, Toddle, we have all these other tools that you can use, you create amazing things. And if you go to native apps, that is the area where I am most of the time and spending more time with. Why? Because I am also like you, I also code it myself, right? Like, I am from Web 0. So I was born as a graph designer. And in Web 1, I was, oh, so there is this new shiny object in front of me, it's the Internet. I'm jumping in. So I was doing graph design for a web that later on was web design.
And, this evolved later on to me to learn a lot of programming languages and understanding all these things. And, of course, I also worked with WordPress and did the other things with code, and even my website is called it until today is Angular. But it was at that point in Angular that I realized, okay, the next thing now is React.
And I am a designer now learning Figma, knowing design systems and everything, and now there is this shiny object on the other side that is React, and then I'm like, oh, but I already know Angular. Do I need to learn React? And then after a couple of months, there is Vue. And at that moment, I was like, okay, either I keep being a designer or I go full development, which I actually never enjoyed. I was developing or creating HTML, CSS, and learning a little bit of frameworks because my customers wanted a product. They didn't want to hire a Designer or a Developer. They wanted a website, and I'm sure that's right for you too. So maybe you became a developer because you were just fulfilling the need as well. So I was, oh, I want a website, I want the e-commerce. And I was like, okay, so I'm a designer, then you need a developer. They don't want that. So I start to build them by myself.
Joe Casabona: This is so, I had kind of the opposite. I went the opposite way. Right? I loved writing the code. I was a Developer, but like you said, people don't, and people didn't wanna hire. They wanted a full stack. Right? Full stack Web Developer. So the advent of themes, like, saved my butt. Right? Like, most of my money came from Graphic Designers who would send me Photoshop files, and I would slice them up and turn them into websites. And I was like, well, I can't just rely on, like, 3 or 4 Designers. So, like, when WordPress themes became a theme, that was really good for me. But we have the same exact path. Right? Like, I learned Angular, and then, like, Angular 2 came out, and, like, that was different from Angular 1. And then when I was at the University of Scranton, like, working in the IT department, my coworker, it felt like every month would come to me and be like, Hey. We need to learn Angular. Hey. We need to learn React. Hey. We need to learn Ionic. And I'm like, why do I need to learn any of this? Right? And when like, when I fully left web development, like, the last project I worked on, we were building like, a front-end thing for WordPress, and the project lead was like, we should build this on headless WordPress with Gatsby. And I'm like, why, though? Like, why? And he's like because it would be fun. And I'm like, I don't know any of those things. And so and I'm not gonna learn them for free. So, like, we can either do it the way I know and was hired to do it, or you can, like, double what you're paying me to learn these new things because it would be fun. And he's like, let's just do it your way. And I'm like, I'm glad you glad you see that.
So, yeah, I kind of felt the same way. Like, there was a point where coding tools evolved so quickly that I'm like, well, I'm not keeping up, and so I might as well get out. Right? And now it's, like, almost settled. Right? Like, Vue kinda won, and React definitely won. But for a while, it was like, what am I learning like, why do I need to learn all of this stuff? And, like, I think Ionic, like, is now a no-code. Is that accurate? Like, I don't know. It was used to turn web apps into native apps, but, like, not very well, obviously. And, like, I know that that has changed. I know that has changed a lot. So, actually, there is a little bit of a cliffhanger here because I'm really curious about this part. Obviously, I have ideas for native apps. What are your favorite no-code tools for native apps?
Karla Fernandes: Yeah. So I have been using something that designers already love, and it's already no code tool too. And a lot of people don't think about it that way. That's Figma. So I use Figma to do the prototype and to the design, the app and, come up with the first versions and the iterations and everything.
Afterward, I use something that translates Figma into a native app called Bravo Studio. And Bravo Studio is where kind of the magic happens because Bravo Studio mixes the Figma file that you build that was so beautiful and it will be exactly like that. Not like development, most of the time though, and also with a database.
Joe Casabona: I feel personally called out with that statement.
Karla Fernandes: But you were not developing native apps. Right?
Joe Casabona: No. No. No.
Karla Fernandes: Because I have been teamed with native apps, and the native apps don't turn out like we designed most of the time. That's why. So don't feel personal. In Web Development, I think we don't make that many mistakes.
Joe Casabona: No. No. We don't. I mean, we did for a while, especially when, like, fonts like, that weird time when, like, you couldn't use any font on the web, and they're like, you need to use an image of the fonts. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. Like, that's since no.
Karla Fernandes: Yeah. That was insane indeed. So then Bravo Studio gets the data from whatever database you want through an API. And I know APIs already hear a terrible word to use, but it is just a way for you to read the database in a very easy way. And it is still no-code. So I use Airtable most of the time for most of my products. It is so simple as Google Sheets, and you can even use Google Sheets if you want.
Joe Casabona: Wow. So That's wild. I recently left Airtable to go to Notion. And while I'm mostly happy, when I wanna do something really databasey, I definitely miss Airtable. And I know that there's, like, a lot of really cool features to, like, turn the database into, like, a proper, like, database management system like MySQL, and I think that's really cool.
Karla Fernandes: Yeah. You could use that too. If you have some code experience and you want to just have your own database on your server, you can do that. And you can also integrate too. Think about that. It is not just really about you, okay. You just use all these no-code tools. You can use whatever is available to your mind, like, maybe you have a little bit of background in development. So use that to your advantage, and make things faster. And if you have design experience, do the same, and you can both, like, achieve something great in different ways.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is so cool. I love talking about this. I'm definitely gonna check out what you said Bravo Studio. Right? Is that right?
Karla Fernandes: Exactly.
Joe Casabona: Okay. Cool. So, I will, by the way, I don't think I've said this yet, but everything that we talk about will be in the show notes, which you can find over at [howibuilt.it/414]. [howibuilt.it/414]. That is by the way, that redirect is set up. Thanks to some custom code I wrote that has like, that happens automatically, but you probably don't need to do it if you're doing your own thing.
So, okay. So this is great. We've got some tools. We have a definition of no-code. Before we get into kind of how to apply it practically, I do wanna touch on the software development cycle a little bit. Right? Because, ultimately, even if we're not writing the code, we're still building software. So, can you speak to maybe what some of the differences are in the process between code and no-code and what somebody who's getting into no-code can expect the process to go like? And I will say this is 30 years old at this point, but I'm sure it's still somewhat true. But a 1994 study from the Standish Group found that about 78 or 75% of software projects failed. So I'm sure that's gotten a lot better in the no-code days, but the point being, these projects can be complicated. So what can we expect the process to look like?
Karla Fernandes: I would say the process between having it done with code or no-code, it's pretty similar. You go through the same steps through the validation, to the ideation, to testing. The biggest difference might be the constraints that you may have to build things the way exactly you want. You may not be able to build everything you wish or at least not now. Maybe in a few months, you are. Like, I built 20 apps almost so far, and they were all, I was able to build off them using what's available, and this is increasing every day. So today, you can actually build an Instagram using no-code. And if you think about Instagram, I think people feel how powerful it can be, right? That you can create it using a no-code tool. And the process, you'll be very similar.
So using Bravo Studio to get your file, you get a file that you sent to the App Store and one that you sent to the Play Store the same way you would get a bundle with code from someone. The difference is that you are not touching the sides of it, right? Like, you are not coding it, you are not changing things there, and you don't know exactly how it was built.
But the good thing is that if you validate your idea, let's say, tomorrow you have 10,000 users or 20,000 users, or maybe you don't even need that number. Right? Like, maybe you need much less because many ideas actually don't support so many people. So if you have this idea and you already have, it validated and you want to build a better product, you still can hire developers and work on the side when your idea is still live. So you have developers there on the side working on it, so I'm not here to advocate, okay, forget development, it's gone. Like, machines are just going to do the code for us. ChatGPT is good enough, but easy isn't. If you have tried, it isn't.
Joe Casabona: It definitely is. It's impressive, but it's impressive in the way that, like, a 3-year-old would have, like, a 7-year-old's vocabulary. Right? Like, it's impressive, but they're not gonna be giving, like, the keynote speech at, or a TED talk or something. Right?
Karla Fernandes: No. And if you don't understand code, you cannot really debug that. Because you have no idea where it's wrong. And if you do, it is helpful. But if you don't, it is really not. And, in this case here, I am advocating for you to start with no-code. Spend less time on your idea, validate it faster, spend less money with it. And after you validate and you have a profitable business, hire those Developers, go for it, and go full time on it. Right? Like, go full power.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is, I wrote an article about this recently when for crowdfunding a book that you wanna write. But the idea is that you're mitigating risk. Right? You no longer need to take a huge risk on starting a business, which is beautiful. And that's what no-code is really that its strong suit. Right? You can build something without spending $1,000 of dollars to pay developers or 100 of dollars to pay crappy developers, and you can validate an idea and generate funds without having to go through, like, VC funding or something, and you can start making money to then build your own thing. Right? That and that's software very much is an iterative process. Like, once you build a building, it's built. But when you build software, you can continually build it.
Karla Fernandes: So with no code, you don't need anymore to just have one single product. You can have many and you can try many things at the same time, one after order. So you don't need to be having 1, you can have 2, you can have 10, you can have 12, as much as your capability. And this brings you more possibilities too because maybe your first idea was not the greatest, but maybe the 50 is, and that is getting traction, and you should invest more on that one because you are just really having everything done so fast and so without much investment. And the cost for you to having one native app on the App Store or Google Play is the same for you to have 50. So if you already are paying App Store, if you're already paying Google Play, if you're already paying Bravo or other tool that you want to use, why not take advantage of it?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. So you can kinda test multiple things at one time. Right? And this is really good. You're kinda, you're diversifying a little bit. Right? We want to warn against spreading yourself too thin and not being able to market or properly get ideas. But if you're trying to validate a couple of things at once, like, it's good to hedge your bets. Right? Like, if you, I guess, horse racing. Right? Like, you don't wanna bet on every horse because you're going to lose. But if you wanna bet on 2, maybe 3, right, you're increasing your chances of winning, and no code allows you to do that because you're not paying separate development teams to build separate software. You have pretty fixed costs here. I really I like that. I like that idea.
Karla Fernandes: Your Investors do that too. Right? Investors don't invest everything in a single product.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, look at VC. Like, I mean, VC people. Right? Like, they're investing 1,000,000 of dollars and into lots of 100, maybe, of companies, and probably one of those is going to hit. Right? Like, Peter Thiel made a ton of money from, I think, pay was it PayPal? I think that was his big investment. You know, some of the investors of Google, like, that was their major hit, right, with Facebook. I think Peter Thiel also invested in Facebook, actually. So, yeah, you're creating again, you're mitigating that risk, and this is kind of the beauty of no-code.
So let's wrap up here with some practical and actionable advice. Let's say I wanted to get started with no-code. What are the first one to two things I should do? Like, should I validate the idea first? Should I learn one of these tools first? What are my first two to three steps?
Karla Fernandes: I would say that, yeah, get your idea, try to translate that into something you want to build. After that, decide which of the tools is the best for it. So if it's a native app, search for native app as no-code tools. If it is a web app, search for that. Decide which one you want to go with because, also, the best way to learn is to have a real project.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. For sure. There's a reason that there are so many, like, to-do list apps and calculators. Right? Because they're like an easy thing to build as far as the concept goes, and it gives you the opportunity to learn a new tool. Right?
When I was teaching programming, I always taught my class how to build a number guessing game because that was a very iterative process. Right? You can fix the number as a variable first, and then, like, you have a simple if statement, and then we can add loops if they wanna ask again, and then random numbers. And it was just a very good way to iterate.
And so determine the tool you want and actually work on a real-world thing. Right? Like, don't make it academic because as cool as, like, the Dutch national flag problem is, right, in programming, there's not you know, there's no practical application for that today because, like, in PHP or JavaScript or whatever, like, it'll just for those who don't know, the Dutch national flag problem is how to sort, basically. You have 3 colors. You gotta sort them into buckets. Every programming language basically has a built-in sorting function at this point. Right? So there's not, like, a real-world application for it. But have an idea, start working with it, now there's a real-world application for it.
So let's wrap up here. Thanks for letting me talk about the Dutch national flag problem, by the way. It's very rare I get to do that. I'm really getting to, like, flex my old, like, programming muscles here, which is fun. What are, maybe, like, 1 or 2, maybe 3 if you wanna talk about one of your own projects? What are some great examples of no-code solutions in the real world?
Karla Fernandes: Oh, you have so many right now. Like, if you go to Bravo Studios website, they have several there that you can check out. And one of them that I talk about, I am not super sure if it's VS or VSDO. Oh. It is,
Joe Casabona: oh. Like the social network? VSCO?
Karla Fernandes: No. It's not a social network. It is kind of mental health for LGBTQ. I can't quite pronounce that.
Joe Casabona: Okay. Yeah. LGBTQ?
Karla Fernandes: Yes. Exactly. So it is kind, they even earned award from Apple, which is really cool. It was built with no-code. And it is, you know, it is really about you having that idea, have that content. I have seen a lot of people talking about woman's syndromes, like, from ovary and other things. So there are a lot of products that you could build that are more informational or things that you actually want to be a little bit or have a dust of a social media there. I am not a super fan of everything needs to be a social media today, like, I think we have enough. We should just be a little bit more practical with lives
And, so, from my own projects I would say, my first project, it's called the Scarf app was built in a month. And it was a project I took to learn how to use no-code for the first time. And, I had the idea for 10 years, So it was in a folder just there waiting because I could not program that in, objective c, and I learned during a vacation. So, you can do the same with your, maybe you have a project that is there on your, on the folder, just go act on it. Try to to learn it by yourself or maybe you'll be having a few struggles, but right now, there is so much content to learn, and then you can improve fast.
Joe Casabona: I love that. I'm looking at your apps here. So this is really cool. I'll link to this in the show notes. And, in the pro show, I'm thinking that we could talk about a little bit of more of the implementation stuff. Like, how maybe we could talk through, like, an idea I have for, like, building a no-code app. I know, like, there's one that you recommended in your email that sounds very appealing to me. So, but for people listening, if they wanna learn more about you and what you do, where can they find you?
Karla Fernandes: They can go to my website. It's [vitaminak.design] and also find me on LinkedIn.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. I will, like I said, link to that and everything we talked about in the show notes over at [howibuilt.it/414]. If you want to hear this conversation ad-free and extended, you can find a link in the description to become a member. If you are listening in Apple Podcasts, you can subscribe right in that app.
But, Karla, thanks so much for spending some time with us today. I really loved this conversation.
Karla Fernandes: I'll meet you. Thank you, Joe.
Joe Casabona: Alright. And thank you for listening.
Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time. Get out there and build something.