Modern Makers #30 - How to Win Friends
🧙🏻♂️ Focus on Platform Wizards 🤝 How to Make People Like You
Modern Makers is a weekly newsletter where I share with you a selection of the best available content about no-code and productivity tools. I hope this content will help you grow your business, launch your project or automate your work.
If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, you can use the form below:
Hi makers,
First of all, I send you my best wishes for this new year. I hope you enjoyed the Christmas break and that you are motivated and full of energy to crush it in 2021!
On my side, I was able to take advantage of this time off to set up some automations in order to increase my productivity, both in my daily work and in my personal life as well as in the management of this newsletter. In particular, I took advantage of the end-of-year offer of 30% off on Zapier and switched to a PRO plan on Airtable (which is probably my favorite no-code tool). I'm also working on the creation of a blog with Webflow. This blog will allow me to publish complementary contents to this newsletter and to go more in depth on some subjects that are dear to me: no-code, productivity, automation, personal finance ... stay tuned!
I also took the time to think about the format of this newsletter. Reading one book on a weekly basis can be a bit challenging and so, each week I will share with you 5 lessons from a content, whether it is a book, a podcast episode or a training course. For example, as I took a subscription on Masterclass, I will for send you this month a summary of the masterclass of Chris Voss, a former FBI's negotiator.
This week in the agenda:👇
🤝 One book: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
🧙🏻♂️ Focus on Platform Wizards, a tool that connects Webflow & Airtable
Enjoy!
📚 Book of the week
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Release date: 1936
I was able to read this book during the Christmas break. I really like the format: one principle per chapter (less than 10 minutes of reading on average). Each principle is illustrated with many examples (some names come up very often, including Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln). Some principles are pretty obvious but we often tend to ignore them. A little reminder with these 5 principles that caught my attention:
Five key lessons / takeaways: Interesting people are interested - people you meet are more interested in themselves than in your problems. So try to only talk about yourself when the other person you're speaking with asks you to do so. Ask questions that the other person will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and what makes them proudest. Give them a sense of importance. Do this with sincerity and curiosity, of course. Be humble: "Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him"
Assume and mention your own mistakes - When you want to criticise someone else's behaviour or work, mention the fact that you too make mistakes, that no one is perfect. If you are wrong or if you have made a mistake, be proactive and admit your mistake quickly and enthusiastically. Don't give others the opportunity to discover your mistakes
Try to avoid criticising other people - criticism is often futile as it will tend to put the other person in a defensive position. By criticising someone, you hurt their pride, their sense of importance and you will in turn generate resentment. "Let's realise that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home". Instead of making definitive judgments about a person, try to put yourself in their shoes and understand why they act or think the way they do. Also remember that human beings are primarily influenced by emotion rather than logic
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, ‘You’re wrong.’ - I realise how much I have ignored this principle in my life. I can't count the number of wild debates where, knowing I was right, I could spend hours trying to convince another person. "The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it”. Even if you are sure the other person is wrong, try to express your humble point of view, mentioning that you may be wrong too. Let the other person see for himself or herself that you are right. As Galileo said, "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself”. Because I didn't apply this principle in the past, some people must have found me arrogant and pretentious
People love to be challenged - setting up a challenge is a great way to get the best out of your teams. People naturally want to excel, prove their worth, win and feel important. Healthy competition allows everyone to give their best. A good way to mobilise your teams. Even more important than ever in a remote working environment like the one we are currently living in
Some other content that caught my attention this week:
🙅 No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees by Sahil Lavingia - Gumroad's CEO tells us about his company's unique and inspiring organization. His goal: freedom at all costs! No meetings (everything happens on Slack, Notion or GitHub), no deadlines and employees are paid by the hour (up to $250 per hour for strategic roles) with a limit of 20 hours per week (additional hours are paid at 50%)
⌨️ How to Start a Blog that Changes Your Life by Nat Eliason - I don’t know yet if my new blog will change my life. But this very complete article will definitely help me create it. Nat doesn't focus too much on the technical aspects such as hosting but rather on the editorial strategy, the promotion of the posts as well as the monetisation
🚜 FarmVille Once Took Over Facebook. Now Everything Is FarmVille - New York Times - Do you remember FarmVille? This video game was a true sensation in 2009. It officially disappeared from Facebook this week. This article looks back at the impact of this game created by Zynga, including its annoying, yet viral system that saw players asking their Facebook friends to help them grow them farm
🧰 Product
Platform Wizards is a new tool I discovered this week (thanks Patrice). On its website, Platform Wizards describes itself as a tool that allows you to build web applications in a few minutes. With Platform Wizards, you can develop the front-end of your application with Webflow and use Airtable as a database. Platform Wizards then takes care of connecting these two tools to create your application. The tool is currently available in beta version 0.5 and plans in the future to add integrations with Zapier, Integromat and Firebase as well as the possibility to set up a payment system within your app (probably powered by Stripe).
A crash course is available at this address for those who want to learn how the tool works.
Have you been able to build projects using this tool? If so, let me know! 🙋
Notelet allows you to turn any Notion page into a website. A newcomer in a market where tools such as Super.so and Fruition are already positioned.
Notelet lets you publish a website with a .notelet.so domain name for free. If you want to use your custom domain name, you will have to pay $7 per month. It is also possible to add some snippets of code including a Google Analytics tag to collect your audience data. At first glance, it's hard to see what Notelet brings to the market compared to its competitors. For comparison, Super.so is $12 per month and Fruition is a free open-source tool.
⚒ Tutorials
Makerpad announced a few weeks ago the launch of tool-paths, video tutorials that allow to create a project from A to Z using no-code tools. Four first tutorials are already available:
How to build and automate a job board with Webflow and Airtable
How to create a website and an e-commerce site from your phone with Universe
How to build and manage a membership community with Gumroad
How to build a membership-based business on Squarespace
You will need to create a free account on Makerpad to get access to these tutorials.
📦 In other news
Want to learn how to build landing pages with Carrd? This course is for you!
Minimal Notion Icons is a collection of icons and covers for your Notion pages
A crash course to learn how to use Figma
How to design an effective relational database on Airtable
Nested symbols are now available on Webflow
A Coda webinar this Wednesday the 13th around company wiki
Adalo or Softr for your next project? This video compares the two tools
SpreadSimple announced new integrations including Paypal, Notion and Google Tag Manager
As always, if you're enjoying Modern Makers, I would love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up. I do my best to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you're enjoying it!
I also invite you to contact me if you have questions or need help with no-code tools or if you want to have a virtual coffee with me ☕
Have a great week, and keep building!
Martin,