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

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

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

This week we are chatting to Angela Goodhart from Virginia

Angela is a Photographer, Author and Teacher. 

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

I've been using first generation no-code tools like WordPress for almost ten years for my photography website. I've also used IFTTT to automate some processes such as sharing blog posts on social media, and apps like Buffer to automate regular social posting on Instagram. However I still consider myself to be very new to the field of no-code. 

I'm interested in building apps for photography and well-being. I’m also enthusiastic about creating a job hub to help college graduates with Autism Spectrum Disorder to be able to get some gig work so they can build portfolios and get work experience. I tried to get my college kids and my IT savvy husband to build these projects for me but they were busy and weren’t as enthusiastic as I was about the idea. When I stumbled onto no-code, I realized I could learn to do it myself! I don’t have to rely on others to build out the ideas I’d like to create. 

It’s fantastic to see just how far no-code can take you and how it has moved on from just landing pages, blogs and simple automations to being interactive communities, complex apps and fully functional SaaS products. So can you take us through some of no-code projects have you built in the past and what tools did you use for them?

In addition to creating and maintaining my business website using WordPress I've also self-published a photography book on Amazon using their Kindle Development Platform.  So far this year I launched a newsletter called A Gossamer Thread in January. To create the newsletter I decided to use Flodesk as it allows you to create visually beautiful emails.

My newsletter is designed to be a dose of creativity. Each month I send out two issues all about photography, well-being, and mindful productivity. 

I am also beta testing a photography course "Take Better Pictures Now" that is currently hosted on my website.

It shows how no-code tools have helped you to progress in your business, being able to release complementary products that match your core offering. So let's bring things up to the current day, what are you currently working on and what stage is it at?

I offer mentoring and I also have photography courses on DSLR camera basics, an iPhone Photography Masterclass and a course for young adults called Teens Behind The Camera.

I am continually honing my photography skills and investing in my own education and training. The reason I enjoy working in photography is that being behind the lens it gets you out of your head and into the present moment as you photograph the things and people that matter to you.

I'll also need to find or create a permanent home for my photography courses and create a landing page and funnel for them and possibly look to market them wider through social media by running Facebook adverts. So there is a whole new skill-set to be learned.

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‍The next project will be to rewrite one of my Kindle well-being books and even to launch a complementary mini-course and a stand-alone Notion dashboard to goes with it.  

And after those projects are done I'd really like to work on the jobs hub that I have in mind. For that I think that I’ll be using Pory and Airtable and the Makerpad tutorials to help me build. A long-term goal is to create a membership community too! All of these things will be possible thanks to no-code tools and skills! 

It’s great how you have a long term plan of how your business can expand and grow into many different products and streams of revenue.  Thinking more of the future, what are you looking forward to seeing happen in the no-code space in the years to come? 

There are several things that I’m looking forward to as the no-code space evolves. First, I’m hoping to see new tools be created that can bundle and replace multiple old SaaS tools into one convenient platform.  ‍

‍Secondly I’m hopeful that more right-brained entrepreneurs will get involved in no-code as this will accelerate the capabilities of what these tools can do!  It’s also really important to get more young people involved in no-code.  I think no-code should be taught in high schools, I wish my kids had learned about this.

As the no-code space matures it will become more accessible to a much wider audience and they will all approach it in their own ways with their favourite tools . Do you have a favourite no-code tool? And what's the next no-code tool you're thinking of trying out?

I absolutely love Notion.  It has replaced Trello, Airtable, Evernote, and my planner all into one platform. Also I am really interested in learning bubble next!

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

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