6/14/2022 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S11-E07

Duration: 61 minutes

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In This Episode

Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast, the live show.  The BuiltOnAir Podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable world.

Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com. Join our community, join our Slack Channel, and meet your fellow Airtable fans.

Alli Alosa – Hi there! I’m Alli 🙂 I’m a fine artist turned “techie” with a passion for organization and automation. I’m also proud to be a Community Leader in the Airtable forum, and a co-host of the BuiltOnAir podcast. My favorite part about being an Airtable consultant and developer is that I get to talk with people from all sorts of industries, and each project is an opportunity to learn how a business works.

Kamille Parks – I am an Airtable Community Forums Leader and the developer behind the custom Airtable app “Scheduler”, one of the winning projects in the Airtable Custom Blocks Contest now widely available on the Marketplace. I focus on building simple scripts, automations, and custom apps for Airtable that streamline data entry and everyday workflows.

Dan Fellars – I am the Founder of Openside, On2Air, and BuiltOnAir. I love automation and software. When not coding the next feature of On2Air, I love spending time with my wife and kids and golfing.

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:10 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Reddit] Do you think AirTable’s pricing strurue is be a barrier to future growth? : Airtable

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[Twitter] Leo Guinan on Twitter: "@CSMikeCardona @arvidkahl @airtable I'll +1 for Mike building it. You won't be disappointed with the result. 👍" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Other collaborators can see my personal views – Ask the community / Views – Airtable Community Forum

Meet the Experts – 00:34:42 –

Meet Charlie Melendez from ProfitGrab.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:49:33 –

We dive into a full working base that will A crypto algorithmic trading bot. Find out more at https://www.profitgrab.com/

Field Focus – –

A deep dive into the Display Unpaid Balances Formulas & Linked Records – Use Formula and Linked Record fields to display unpaid balances for work performed. 

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:10

Roundup of what’s happening in the Airtable communities – Airtable, BuiltOnAir, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Reddit] Do you think AirTable’s pricing strurue is be a barrier to future growth? : Airtable

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[BuiltOnAir Community] Slack | general | BuiltOnAir | 1 new item

[Twitter] Leo Guinan on Twitter: "@CSMikeCardona @arvidkahl @airtable I'll +1 for Mike building it. You won't be disappointed with the result. 👍" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Other collaborators can see my personal views – Ask the community / Views – Airtable Community Forum

Segment: Meet the Experts

Start Time: 00:34:42

Charlie Melendez – Automation Architect | Low-Code Developer

Meet Charlie Melendez from ProfitGrab.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:49:33

ProfitGrab

We dive into a full working base that will A crypto algorithmic trading bot. Find out more at https://www.profitgrab.com/

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time:

Learn about the Display Unpaid Balances – Use Formula and Linked Record fields to display unpaid balances for work performed.

A deep dive into the Display Unpaid Balances Formulas & Linked Records – Use Formula and Linked Record fields to display unpaid balances for work performed. 

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir podcast,
[00:01:44] season 11, episode seven.
[00:01:47] Good to be back with you
[00:01:48] this Tuesday morning,
[00:01:50] myself and our regulars,
[00:01:51] Alli and Kamille are with us
[00:01:53] and we have special guests with us,
[00:01:55] Charlie melendez. Charlie, welcome.
[00:01:58] Thank you.
[00:01:59] Good to have you with us.
[00:02:01] We'll learn more about Charlie and his
[00:02:03] story and background
[00:02:05] later in the episode.
[00:02:06] So as always the BuiltOnAir
[00:02:08] podcast is an hour long live show
[00:02:11] we do every Tuesday
[00:02:13] and we always go through
[00:02:14] a couple different segments.
[00:02:16] I'll walk through
[00:02:17] what we're gonna be doing today.
[00:02:18] We always begin
[00:02:19] with our Round the Bases,
[00:02:21] talking about what's going on in the
[00:02:23] Airtable communities,
[00:02:24] keep you up to date
[00:02:26] on everything Airtable
[00:02:27] then we'll do a spotlight on our
[00:02:29] primary sponsor On2Air,
[00:02:31] then we'll learn more
[00:02:32] about Charlie and his story as
[00:02:34] an expert in the Airtable world
[00:02:37] and what he's up to.
[00:02:38] And then Charlie's gonna
[00:02:40] walk us through
[00:02:41] a base of his called ProfitGrab.
[00:02:44] Then we'll talk quickly
[00:02:45] about our BuiltOnAir community
[00:02:47] and how you can join.
[00:02:48] And then finally, Kamille
[00:02:50] is going to
[00:02:51] walk us through how to use fields in
[00:02:54] particular formula fields
[00:02:56] and linked record fields
[00:02:59] to manage unpaid balances and
[00:03:01] how to display those. So
[00:03:04] with that
[00:03:04] we will kick off with our Round the Bases
[00:03:08] and talk about what's going on
[00:03:10] in the Airtable community.
[00:03:13] Nothing, I didn't see any
[00:03:15] product feature updates this week.
[00:03:18] So relatively quiet
[00:03:19] on the Airtable front
[00:03:21] unless you guys know of anything
[00:03:23] announced,
[00:03:25] nothing announced.
[00:03:27] But you know,
[00:03:28] the usual array of
[00:03:30] some people are having a
[00:03:31] b testing and some people aren't.
[00:03:34] So there's no telling
[00:03:35] if that particular thing
[00:03:36] will be made
[00:03:37] available to everyone
[00:03:39] anytime soon or if they're gonna,
[00:03:40] you know, drop implementation. So
[00:03:43] that's right, That's right.
[00:03:45] Somebody took a screenshot
[00:03:46] of a feature that was
[00:03:47] there and then an hour or two later
[00:03:50] it was gone.
[00:03:51] I hope it comes back because I
[00:03:53] really wanted it definitely.
[00:03:56] So this is the
[00:03:58] filtering by linked records and
[00:04:01] being able to choose
[00:04:02] a particular linked record
[00:04:04] rather than typing in a value.
[00:04:05] We touched on this briefly
[00:04:07] in our last episode
[00:04:08] because I was talking about
[00:04:09] using a single select
[00:04:11] as a little hack to do that.
[00:04:13] So
[00:04:14] I'm I'm hopeful.
[00:04:15] Yeah, I think Airtable's learned
[00:04:18] not to do those tests
[00:04:20] on Tuesday morning or
[00:04:21] else we'll go live with it.
[00:04:24] I specifically said like the last time
[00:04:28] a major one happened,
[00:04:30] I was like maybe
[00:04:31] you should just do it on Thursday.
[00:04:32] So it's after our show
[00:04:34] and after Chris Dancy
[00:04:35] and Ben Green show on Wednesday,
[00:04:38] just so that no one can,
[00:04:41] you know, publicize something
[00:04:43] a little too early.
[00:04:45] but this has been sort of,
[00:04:47] you know, the screenshots happened
[00:04:49] about a week ago,
[00:04:50] so it wasn't like it was this morning.
[00:04:53] I believe it was Tuesday afternoon.
[00:04:56] Yeah, I guess the the implications of that
[00:04:58] is like right now
[00:04:59] when you filter by linked record,
[00:05:01] if you change the name that
[00:05:03] linked record
[00:05:04] then that messes up that filter.
[00:05:05] Whereas this one I guess we'll be
[00:05:06] at the source like the record I. D.
[00:05:08] So you can change the name
[00:05:10] and we'll stick
[00:05:10] with that.
[00:05:11] That's really nice.
[00:05:12] And you guys probably
[00:05:14] discuss this on your
[00:05:15] last call but the 50 record limit,
[00:05:17] sorry 50 automations now, from 25 to 50
[00:05:20] Is also insane.
[00:05:21] I remember when I first learned
[00:05:23] it was 25 was from Ben Green.
[00:05:25] He had on one of his YouTube videos
[00:05:27] and I was like 25 limit because I've never
[00:05:28] reached that much
[00:05:29] and I was like
[00:05:30] I'm never gonna reach that
[00:05:31] and I reach it for
[00:05:32] like almost all of my clients now.
[00:05:34] So I hated it because you're having to
[00:05:36] calculate
[00:05:37] which ones do I want to use
[00:05:38] with Make and Zapier
[00:05:39] and which ones do I want to
[00:05:40] keep in Airtable and
[00:05:42] And doing all these like
[00:05:43] analysis and now there's
[00:05:45] just like this freedom off the
[00:05:46] back but I know that we'll be
[00:05:48] hitting that 50 limit pretty soon.
[00:05:50] Yeah there are still some things,
[00:05:52] a lot of things
[00:05:53] that you can't really replace
[00:05:57] Make or Zapier
[00:06:00] with native Airtable automations
[00:06:02] just because they connect to so many other
[00:06:04] platforms.
[00:06:05] You can do a lot of simple stuff
[00:06:07] or anything that's coding or
[00:06:09] hooking up to an A. P. I probably
[00:06:11] with the script action
[00:06:13] but there's still some stuff that,
[00:06:14] you know,
[00:06:15] Probably should remain
[00:06:17] in those other platforms,
[00:06:19] but expanding it to 50
[00:06:20] means some people
[00:06:21] are going to be able to simplify
[00:06:23] and some other people are
[00:06:24] probably gonna stay
[00:06:25] loosely where they're at.
[00:06:27] Yeah.
[00:06:28] Yeah, that's a good segue.
[00:06:30] I'll skip to this
[00:06:31] thread that was
[00:06:32] in the BuiltOnAir community
[00:06:34] that Hannah posted
[00:06:36] about your favorite feature
[00:06:38] from last month
[00:06:39] and has the screenshot of
[00:06:41] of what came out last month
[00:06:43] and a lot of people agree
[00:06:44] with Charlie about the
[00:06:46] increase in the automation limit.
[00:06:51] Other stuff
[00:06:53] people posted
[00:06:54] automations,
[00:06:56] somebody said the closing of the forms
[00:07:00] to be able to
[00:07:02] give a message
[00:07:03] if you want to shut down a form.
[00:07:07] That is a good one.
[00:07:09] Yeah, looks like those
[00:07:11] were the two favorite ones for the month.
[00:07:15] I'm also a fan of the calendar,
[00:07:19] the calendar view
[00:07:20] and how you can choose the different
[00:07:21] fields like you can for
[00:07:22] the timeline.
[00:07:23] I think that's pretty huge.
[00:07:25] I know a ton of people that have been
[00:07:27] asking for that
[00:07:28] for a very long time, so that's exciting.
[00:07:31] I think the implement
[00:07:32] the exact implementation was a little bit
[00:07:35] like it wasn't quite,
[00:07:37] I love the idea,
[00:07:39] I was one of the people that said
[00:07:41] calendar view should get
[00:07:43] what timeline view does
[00:07:45] and I appreciate that they're
[00:07:47] making, you know, those adjustments to it,
[00:07:49] it's if I were to hazard a guess,
[00:07:51] which has not been confirmed
[00:07:53] by anything at
[00:07:53] all so don't quote me
[00:07:55] if I were to hazard a guess,
[00:07:57] the fact that they're adding
[00:07:58] that level of future additions
[00:08:00] to the calendar view
[00:08:02] to me suggests that they're
[00:08:03] updating the underlying code
[00:08:05] that is the calendar view
[00:08:06] because it's one of the
[00:08:07] oldest views in the
[00:08:08] platform.
[00:08:10] whereas timeline was the newest view
[00:08:12] in the platform and being able to have
[00:08:14] that parity.
[00:08:16] So it's good to see that it is having the,
[00:08:21] you know, attention put on it.
[00:08:23] Scott was saying that, you know,
[00:08:25] the actual implementation
[00:08:27] was disappointing because again,
[00:08:29] it wasn't quite
[00:08:30] doing what I think some of us
[00:08:32] were expecting it to do,
[00:08:33] like it didn't wrap
[00:08:34] the right way and if you had
[00:08:38] an attachment field,
[00:08:39] the link would appear and that's,
[00:08:41] you know,
[00:08:41] most likely not what you would want.
[00:08:45] but I liked it there
[00:08:48] focusing on it
[00:08:49] or having visible focus on it.
[00:08:51] It just, it needs a little bit
[00:08:53] more work to be
[00:08:54] I think where it needs to be
[00:08:56] one new integration
[00:08:58] that I've seen in the past month
[00:09:01] it's in beta,
[00:09:02] so it's probably a b tested across people,
[00:09:04] but it's the Twilio integration
[00:09:06] and I love that because
[00:09:07] I typically use have to use
[00:09:10] Zapier for Twilio, or Make
[00:09:11] and the only thing I don't like though
[00:09:13] is that you can only put one phone number
[00:09:15] when you're sending a message
[00:09:17] and usually I want to
[00:09:18] send messages to an array of
[00:09:19] phone numbers potentially.
[00:09:21] And Twilio only in the native integration
[00:09:23] only allows one phone number so kind
[00:09:25] of just throwing that out there
[00:09:27] was an Airtable people
[00:09:28] listening to this open
[00:09:29] that up.
[00:09:30] Yeah. Very good.
[00:09:33] Cool. Let's move on.
[00:09:35] Another one will stay
[00:09:36] in the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:09:38] Actually yeah this is a good one.
[00:09:43] Rebecca friend of the show
[00:09:45] was a guest a couple seasons ago
[00:09:48] just talking
[00:09:49] about how much she's been able
[00:09:51] to cut down on her workflow
[00:09:53] with automations and
[00:09:54] and two years ago
[00:09:56] she says she had a not a workflow
[00:09:58] that took a month,
[00:09:58] cut it down to five days
[00:10:00] and now down to five hours
[00:10:03] and then this year
[00:10:04] it's now down to 15 minutes.
[00:10:06] And so I think it's cool
[00:10:08] to just talk about
[00:10:09] the wins of using Airtable to
[00:10:11] to reduce time to do things.
[00:10:13] There's so many
[00:10:15] examples of things that would
[00:10:17] take forever
[00:10:18] that you can automate in Airtable so
[00:10:21] shout out to Rebecca for
[00:10:22] that.
[00:10:25] Yeah
[00:10:25] that's a I think it's a great story
[00:10:28] because Rebecca
[00:10:29] uses Airtable for her like job
[00:10:32] and it's unlike us who
[00:10:34] you know we have
[00:10:35] consulting businesses
[00:10:36] or part of a consulting business
[00:10:38] where you know we are,
[00:10:39] it is explicitly our job
[00:10:41] to use Airtable and be good at it.
[00:10:44] Rebecca's story
[00:10:45] is a little bit different in that
[00:10:48] she found a tool to help
[00:10:50] with her
[00:10:50] regular job
[00:10:51] and became so good at it over time
[00:10:54] just by using it more and more
[00:10:56] And being able to, as she's saying,
[00:10:59] cut something down from one month to 15
[00:11:01] minutes just by using the platform
[00:11:04] consistently over time.
[00:11:06] And I think that's,
[00:11:07] you know, a real strength of the
[00:11:08] product. There are a lot of other
[00:11:11] database or database like
[00:11:13] programs where you could
[00:11:15] have the same story
[00:11:17] where you use it for a couple of
[00:11:18] years and you get something down
[00:11:21] from one month to five or 15 minutes.
[00:11:24] but the odds of you wanting
[00:11:26] to stay in that platform
[00:11:27] by yourself effectively
[00:11:29] for that long to get to that point
[00:11:32] it's slim. Like
[00:11:33] if you, no one's gonna stick around
[00:11:35] with my school by themselves
[00:11:37] if you're not a database person
[00:11:39] by nature is what I'm saying.
[00:11:42] Airtable is friendly enough
[00:11:44] that they'll have people
[00:11:46] will stick with it long enough
[00:11:47] to get to a point where
[00:11:48] they can
[00:11:49] have a story like Rebecca's.
[00:11:51] Yeah,
[00:11:52] yeah. And there's countless of others.
[00:11:54] We love hearing those success stories.
[00:11:56] So
[00:11:58] alright, moving on.
[00:12:00] already did that one
[00:12:01] final one from the BuiltOnAir
[00:12:03] community. so Scott,
[00:12:05] this was actually brought up,
[00:12:07] I think Jan mentioned in
[00:12:08] the comments last week
[00:12:11] about a video with Howie Liu,
[00:12:14] airtable Ceo and he posted
[00:12:16] that and then Scott shared it again
[00:12:19] after watching it. And
[00:12:20] so first couple of things
[00:12:22] in this thread first is watch the video,
[00:12:24] I started to watch it.
[00:12:25] I haven't finished it,
[00:12:27] I'm gonna finish that.
[00:12:28] But it's good if you want to see
[00:12:30] his insights on
[00:12:31] on his vision for Airtable and
[00:12:33] where it's going.
[00:12:34] But the better thing about this thread
[00:12:37] is if you're interested at all in history
[00:12:39] of database design,
[00:12:41] this thread is for you,
[00:12:43] Bill French and others
[00:12:45] jump in
[00:12:46] and give a long history.
[00:12:48] And if you're nostalgic
[00:12:50] for the early days of computing,
[00:12:52] lots of great nuggets
[00:12:54] of information in this
[00:12:55] thread, talking about the early days
[00:12:58] of busy coke and excel
[00:13:01] and the history of
[00:13:02] the look up field
[00:13:03] and naming conventions
[00:13:04] and things like that.
[00:13:05] So I don't know if you guys
[00:13:07] all dove into this thread.
[00:13:08] There's a lot of stuff
[00:13:09] here.
[00:13:11] I
[00:13:12] I just wanted to say like
[00:13:13] I love watching Howie
[00:13:14] Liu's interviews sometimes
[00:13:16] because the interviewer
[00:13:17] you can tell has
[00:13:18] never used Airtable and they usually
[00:13:19] ask a question like,
[00:13:21] so you know what,
[00:13:22] what can you do, what makes you
[00:13:23] different from the other,
[00:13:24] you know, things and you know
[00:13:26] what makes you stand out,
[00:13:27] what makes you different
[00:13:28] and you can tell like
[00:13:29] for me, I'm like wanting to yell
[00:13:31] at the screen like,
[00:13:32] are you kidding me?
[00:13:33] Like it's it's amazing.
[00:13:33] But I can tell that he's kind of like
[00:13:35] catching, he doesn't even know how to
[00:13:37] begin and he just kind of explains it
[00:13:39] as you know we want to build apps and he
[00:13:40] says it in this like calm ceo manner but
[00:13:43] I just think it's funny
[00:13:44] because we know the use case,
[00:13:46] we know how powerful it is,
[00:13:46] like how fun it is. So
[00:13:48] I just want to point that out.
[00:13:50] No, it's, it is kind of crazy.
[00:13:52] I've noticed
[00:13:52] I've watched a few interviews with
[00:13:54] him recently and
[00:13:55] generally speaking, he does
[00:13:56] exactly that he's very calm and
[00:13:58] kind of takes a very
[00:13:59] calm approach to it. It's
[00:14:01] it's interesting to try and hear him
[00:14:03] to hear him try to explain what it is like
[00:14:06] because we try and do that
[00:14:08] all the time
[00:14:08] and I feel like people don't usually get
[00:14:10] it until they actually have
[00:14:12] their own Aha moment.
[00:14:13] Well that's the problem
[00:14:15] because Airtable is a generalist software
[00:14:19] so you know
[00:14:19] it,
[00:14:20] my nature is to say,
[00:14:22] oh well if you wanted to
[00:14:24] build your own Crm,
[00:14:25] you know, you could, you know,
[00:14:27] set your stuff up like this,
[00:14:28] but if the person
[00:14:28] I'm talking to doesn't need a Crm
[00:14:31] and they need something else,
[00:14:32] I've chosen the wrong example
[00:14:34] to explain them to
[00:14:35] because what they're hearing is
[00:14:37] oh it's a Crm platform
[00:14:38] that you can customize,
[00:14:39] it's not,
[00:14:39] it's a platform
[00:14:41] that you can customize to be
[00:14:43] something else
[00:14:44] and depending on what that something is,
[00:14:46] it might be a great
[00:14:47] solution or it might be like
[00:14:49] a really convoluted setup,
[00:14:50] you know, depending on where you go.
[00:14:52] Yeah, the best part here is
[00:14:54] towards the end, Bill talks about,
[00:14:57] you know,
[00:14:58] there will be a day
[00:15:00] our grandchildren
[00:15:02] or in 30 years will be like
[00:15:04] there used to be this platform
[00:15:06] called Airtable, that was amazing and our
[00:15:09] grandkids will roll their eyes at us and
[00:15:12] will be the old ones
[00:15:14] in the room like Bill and Scott and Peter,
[00:15:16] although I'm probably closer to them
[00:15:19] than you guys are,
[00:15:21] I think about that actually
[00:15:24] kind of often and
[00:15:26] this goes back to what Bill said
[00:15:28] recently about how we're kind of in the
[00:15:29] beginning of this massive wave
[00:15:31] that's coming for no code,
[00:15:32] He's a statistic like
[00:15:33] in the next five years,
[00:15:34] 60% of development
[00:15:36] is going to be in the no code realm
[00:15:38] and it's very true,
[00:15:39] we're seeing as consultants,
[00:15:41] all of these companies coming
[00:15:42] out of the woodworks
[00:15:44] finding us and saying, we really,
[00:15:45] I want to use Airtable,
[00:15:47] our competitor uses it
[00:15:48] or we saw this other use case
[00:15:49] and we want to match
[00:15:50] that same thing
[00:15:50] and build it better.
[00:15:51] It's amazing.
[00:15:52] And then I think to myself like,
[00:15:54] okay, we might have 5,
[00:15:56] 10 years of amazing
[00:15:57] opportunities as consultants to work
[00:15:59] with amazing companies,
[00:16:00] but what's gonna be the next thing
[00:16:02] and then I kind of think to myself,
[00:16:04] you know, spreadsheets
[00:16:05] went from Excel to Google sheets,
[00:16:07] which kind of
[00:16:07] revolutionized it,
[00:16:08] but relational databases,
[00:16:10] which is what Airtable is,
[00:16:11] there's nothing really above,
[00:16:13] at least to my knowledge,
[00:16:14] I'd love to be corrected
[00:16:14] on this, but
[00:16:15] above relational databases,
[00:16:17] like that's kind of the peak
[00:16:19] performance for applications,
[00:16:20] that's what everything is.
[00:16:21] Facebook is just a
[00:16:22] relational database.
[00:16:23] Wikipedia is just a relational database.
[00:16:24] So if Airtable really wins that
[00:16:27] relational database category,
[00:16:29] it might be a really, really long time,
[00:16:31] but it's definitely true.
[00:16:32] There's always gonna be a moment
[00:16:34] where they say,
[00:16:35] I remember Airtable so good
[00:16:35] call.
[00:16:36] Yeah,
[00:16:37] yeah, maybe AI would be
[00:16:39] the next generation on top of that,
[00:16:42] some form of that.
[00:16:45] Yeah, cool stuff.
[00:16:47] Very cool. So yeah,
[00:16:49] great thread. Awesome insights.
[00:16:52] Bill, Scott, Peter Nelson
[00:16:54] always also getting involved
[00:16:55] in that conversation and
[00:16:57] sharing their insights.
[00:16:58] So we'd love to,
[00:17:00] to see the BuiltOnAir community and
[00:17:02] it's been pretty active
[00:17:04] last couple of weeks, so
[00:17:05] jump in and participate there.
[00:17:08] Moving on, there's only one
[00:17:10] thing that I that
[00:17:11] I thought worth bringing up
[00:17:13] from the Airtable community
[00:17:15] and I always think this
[00:17:16] is a good reminder
[00:17:18] somebody learning through
[00:17:21] maybe unfortunate circumstances
[00:17:24] that personal views
[00:17:26] are not hidden from other users.
[00:17:31] And so this person saying
[00:17:32] what's going on here,
[00:17:33] I created all these personal
[00:17:34] views, but I can see theirs
[00:17:37] and they can see mine
[00:17:39] for other collaborators and I
[00:17:41] didn't realize this,
[00:17:42] but they actually quoted
[00:17:44] from the documentations
[00:17:46] that it says personal views
[00:17:47] are also hidden from other
[00:17:49] collaborators view sidebar by default.
[00:17:52] And so Scott answers this
[00:17:54] basically saying that
[00:17:56] you can toggle that on and off.
[00:17:59] So any thoughts on that?
[00:18:00] Something worth definitely
[00:18:02] if you're working with
[00:18:03] clients to make sure they're aware of.
[00:18:06] I think it's sort of
[00:18:09] one of the top two,
[00:18:11] if I were to hazard a guess
[00:18:14] the top two sort of
[00:18:16] aspects of Airtable
[00:18:17] that I think most people
[00:18:19] want improved upon our
[00:18:21] the record limits per base.
[00:18:23] I think we all just want more records.
[00:18:25] I'll leave that alone.
[00:18:26] And then the second one is you know,
[00:18:28] permissions just generally
[00:18:30] to hide certain things
[00:18:32] throughout the product,
[00:18:34] whether that be views,
[00:18:36] whether that be whole tables.
[00:18:38] There's a lot of things
[00:18:39] that you want to just sort of hide
[00:18:42] in a table because
[00:18:42] of the way that it's delivered
[00:18:45] on the website or via apps.
[00:18:47] The whole base gets
[00:18:48] loaded at one time.
[00:18:50] So,
[00:18:51] you know, mechanically
[00:18:53] they could go in
[00:18:54] and allow you the ability to hide
[00:18:56] certain things. I think there
[00:18:58] at
[00:19:00] they might need to adjust
[00:19:02] how the base loads
[00:19:03] to begin with to really truly hide
[00:19:05] something from somebody
[00:19:06] because if you're tech savvy,
[00:19:08] you could get in there.
[00:19:09] which might be their point.
[00:19:11] Maybe they don't want to
[00:19:12] give people a false sense
[00:19:12] of security,
[00:19:13] but some sense of security would be nice.
[00:19:16] I think there should be a happy medium
[00:19:19] between a personal view and a
[00:19:20] collaborator, collaborative view.
[00:19:24] You know, just
[00:19:26] there's some views
[00:19:27] absolutely no one needs to look at
[00:19:29] except for Zapier.
[00:19:30] Right. Yeah,
[00:19:32] absolutely.
[00:19:33] I mean, I usually try
[00:19:34] and tell my clients
[00:19:35] like personal views are very
[00:19:36] superficial. Like the really only
[00:19:39] benefit that I see to them
[00:19:41] is the fact that you can
[00:19:42] toggle them to be hidden.
[00:19:44] But I mean that doesn't mean
[00:19:45] that no one can find it.
[00:19:47] And also that no one
[00:19:48] else can adjust the
[00:19:51] like no one else can can't talk today,
[00:19:53] No one can configure your personal view
[00:19:56] other than you.
[00:19:58] But other than that,
[00:19:59] I mean someone can just duplicate it
[00:20:01] and then unhide
[00:20:01] whatever they want. So
[00:20:03] it's not really secure.
[00:20:05] Yeah,
[00:20:06] I think going to Kamille's point
[00:20:08] like about the permissions,
[00:20:09] as you were saying
[00:20:10] that one of the biggest ones that I see
[00:20:12] is the duplicate base thing.
[00:20:14] The fact that a read only person
[00:20:16] can duplicate your base,
[00:20:17] duplicate all your
[00:20:18] automations, all your business data,
[00:20:20] like everything put into their own free
[00:20:22] plan, even if it's a pro plan base
[00:20:24] and just like have it there.
[00:20:25] To me is just insane.
[00:20:26] Like if there was a permission
[00:20:28] where I could limit
[00:20:29] read only can duplicate,
[00:20:31] editors can duplicate,
[00:20:32] even creators can, only the owner can
[00:20:34] or creators can duplicate.
[00:20:36] Like
[00:20:36] I think that's a pretty simple one, but
[00:20:38] that's to me is one of the big things
[00:20:41] that I'm talking to clients and I say
[00:20:42] really be careful
[00:20:43] who you give access to the base to.
[00:20:45] Don't just give it around
[00:20:46] like candy. Like be very careful
[00:20:48] because anybody can duplicate all of your
[00:20:49] systems, all of your business data
[00:20:51] immediately
[00:20:53] and Scott agrees.
[00:20:55] I've he also has a comment
[00:20:57] in there Scott,
[00:20:58] friend of the show he was on,
[00:21:00] I believe this season
[00:21:02] in previous seasons as well.
[00:21:04] you know,
[00:21:05] the notion of having utility views
[00:21:07] and utility tables that you set up
[00:21:09] so that your system works,
[00:21:11] but you don't ever actually
[00:21:12] need to go in and look at.
[00:21:16] one of those
[00:21:17] common forms of utility tables
[00:21:20] is like having each collaborator
[00:21:23] in your table as
[00:21:24] a record in that
[00:21:25] as like a users table
[00:21:27] because it allows you to do a whole lot
[00:21:29] of things like attach,
[00:21:31] you know, a particular role
[00:21:33] to a collaborator in a base.
[00:21:36] I feel like that is a common
[00:21:37] enough thing where that should,
[00:21:38] there should just be
[00:21:40] the concept of having a utility table
[00:21:42] might need to be
[00:21:43] fleshed out a little bit more
[00:21:45] as an actual feature of Airtable,
[00:21:46] whether instead of
[00:21:47] it being like a workaround.
[00:21:49] But there's a lot of things that
[00:21:50] go into
[00:21:52] how personally
[00:21:53] I would like to see
[00:21:54] utility views and personal views etcetera
[00:21:57] being improved upon.
[00:21:59] Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of people
[00:22:02] like
[00:22:03] the use case that I think about
[00:22:04] is like when I'm handing off
[00:22:06] a project to a
[00:22:06] client and they might not be super
[00:22:09] familiar with Airtable
[00:22:10] or super comfortable with it yet.
[00:22:11] And they see all
[00:22:11] these tables off to the side that are like
[00:22:14] you know they're like
[00:22:15] why do we have all of these tables?
[00:22:17] And one of them might
[00:22:18] just be a list of countries
[00:22:19] that they could pick from
[00:22:21] or something and that we
[00:22:22] want to have a finite
[00:22:23] list or more control over it.
[00:22:25] But I'm like trust me
[00:22:26] you just don't have to go
[00:22:26] there. Just ignore it.
[00:22:28] Like sometimes I'll put one table
[00:22:29] in the middle that's
[00:22:30] just like a pipe character
[00:22:32] as the name. So it's a divider
[00:22:33] and I'll be like anything on this side,
[00:22:35] worry about that, anything on that side,
[00:22:37] don't worry about it.
[00:22:38] So views got sections
[00:22:40] and then automations got sections
[00:22:42] and my hope is that
[00:22:43] someday tables
[00:22:45] might get sections so I could just dump.
[00:22:47] Yeah
[00:22:48] I probably only need two sections
[00:22:50] for any project that I do
[00:22:52] just the tables and
[00:22:52] then all the utility tables just get
[00:22:55] shoved off into the corner.
[00:22:57] If I could do that I'd be happy with
[00:22:59] that would be nice for you more. But
[00:23:02] literally I just want to hide
[00:23:04] a bunch just put them away.
[00:23:06] It would also be nice
[00:23:07] for automations to have a search bar
[00:23:09] now that we have up to
[00:23:09] 50
[00:23:10] and I see like
[00:23:11] when an error
[00:23:12] and I get an error message
[00:23:13] like this automation
[00:23:14] failed. I have to like
[00:23:15] go through this massive list
[00:23:17] even if I have sections I'm
[00:23:18] like what section what is this
[00:23:20] if there was a search there
[00:23:21] that also be really
[00:23:22] helpful.
[00:23:22] And then one more little feature
[00:23:24] suggestion is record id as
[00:23:26] a field type.
[00:23:27] I think
[00:23:27] like almost every table
[00:23:28] that I use,
[00:23:29] I'm always creating a formula with
[00:23:31] record I. D.
[00:23:32] I mean I could create a formula
[00:23:33] with creative time too
[00:23:34] but they made a creative
[00:23:35] time field type.
[00:23:36] It's just low hanging fruit
[00:23:38] but it's just saved me so much time
[00:23:40] just like
[00:23:41] that's it. You know
[00:23:43] I like that
[00:23:44] I think it would actually
[00:23:45] make it a lot more accessible for the
[00:23:47] everyday user too
[00:23:48] because most people aren't,
[00:23:48] they don't even realize
[00:23:49] you can just type it as a formula
[00:23:53] they do they're like
[00:23:54] I don't even know what this is.
[00:23:56] It might be prompt more
[00:23:56] people
[00:23:57] to do
[00:23:57] a little bit more reading into it.
[00:23:59] Yeah
[00:24:00] for sure.
[00:24:02] Cool. Let's move on to
[00:24:03] another controversial topic
[00:24:06] of Airtable.
[00:24:06] This one comes from the
[00:24:08] Reddit community
[00:24:10] poses the question,
[00:24:11] do you think Airtable's pricing structure
[00:24:14] is a barrier to future growth
[00:24:17] and this one got a lot of discussion.
[00:24:19] I know we've had this topic
[00:24:22] in the past but why not bring it up again?
[00:24:26] Sure.
[00:24:28] I mean,
[00:24:29] does anybody else wanna take this?
[00:24:31] I have a lot to say on this.
[00:24:33] I could give a brief
[00:24:36] summary. So there's
[00:24:39] the issue with scale
[00:24:41] and Airtable
[00:24:42] is that Airtable's pricing structure is by
[00:24:44] collaborator.
[00:24:47] You they have different plans
[00:24:49] where each plan
[00:24:50] will give you like more limits for
[00:24:51] here's how many records
[00:24:53] you can have,
[00:24:53] here's how many automations,
[00:24:54] here's how many
[00:24:55] sync integrations etcetera.
[00:24:58] if you have a small team
[00:25:00] but you need like
[00:25:03] 100,000 records,
[00:25:04] you'll probably be fine
[00:25:06] if you have a large team
[00:25:08] and a small amount of records
[00:25:10] that you need your
[00:25:12] screwed essentially
[00:25:13] because it's you're paying
[00:25:15] by person and sometimes it
[00:25:16] doesn't really make sense
[00:25:18] to pay by person.
[00:25:19] Especially if the people need to
[00:25:21] only interact with very few items. And so
[00:25:26] there's a point
[00:25:28] where businesses
[00:25:29] that run off of Airtable
[00:25:31] often seek solutions that are like
[00:25:33] external portals,
[00:25:35] whether that be pory or Stackr
[00:25:38] or softr or some other
[00:25:39] integration where
[00:25:41] that will handle user management
[00:25:43] and having multiple people in
[00:25:44] your base,
[00:25:45] it sort of reduces the
[00:25:47] reliance you have
[00:25:49] on having collaborators
[00:25:50] actually in Airtable.
[00:25:52] So you're circumventing that cost,
[00:25:54] there's a point,
[00:25:55] this is like an event horizon where you,
[00:25:58] once you pass it,
[00:25:59] you're
[00:26:01] you're now needing a third party
[00:26:03] to do what you might have
[00:26:04] been able to do in Airtable
[00:26:06] had they addressed that particular issue
[00:26:12] go for it, Charlie
[00:26:13] yeah, I see it as
[00:26:15] an existential issue, honestly.
[00:26:17] And I attribute this to
[00:26:19] Chris Dancy,
[00:26:20] who's the first person
[00:26:21] to spark this go off in my brain like
[00:26:23] it's in our interest for Airtable
[00:26:25] to get their economic model right?
[00:26:26] I've even spoken to
[00:26:27] some people at Airtable
[00:26:29] about this
[00:26:29] because I think it's so
[00:26:30] important, I think that
[00:26:34] if they fix the permission side of it,
[00:26:37] that also helps, you know,
[00:26:39] but otherwise
[00:26:40] I don't want any users
[00:26:41] in my Airtable bases, especially the more
[00:26:43] complex bases that I built for clients.
[00:26:45] My biggest selling point to them is like
[00:26:48] why have people in your base
[00:26:49] when they can duplicate
[00:26:51] when they can do when
[00:26:51] they can edit things
[00:26:52] that they shouldn't edit.
[00:26:54] It's overwhelming.
[00:26:54] Imagine having all these tables
[00:26:56] with all these views,
[00:26:57] you hire a new employee,
[00:26:57] you have to train them on,
[00:26:58] you go to this view,
[00:26:59] you go to this table,
[00:27:00] you go to this view
[00:27:01] and then you can only edit these fields.
[00:27:02] It's really overwhelming
[00:27:04] for large businesses
[00:27:05] to actually use Airtable as the
[00:27:07] front end as the interface
[00:27:08] layer.
[00:27:09] That's like the main thing.
[00:27:11] But secondly, why are we paying at the
[00:27:14] user level?
[00:27:15] I don't,
[00:27:16] my whole theory is
[00:27:17] you should be your economic model should
[00:27:19] be based on your actual cost.
[00:27:21] Like what is the cost
[00:27:22] of a base to Airtable,
[00:27:23] It's not adding a user
[00:27:24] If I add one user to the base
[00:27:26] that's not adding a load
[00:27:27] to Airtable in terms of like
[00:27:29] how much does it cost them
[00:27:30] for this base to
[00:27:31] actually function
[00:27:32] at the pennies and dollar level.
[00:27:34] It's really about how many
[00:27:35] records are there,
[00:27:36] how many complex fields
[00:27:37] that are like maybe date based and
[00:27:39] time based,
[00:27:40] how many automations are running,
[00:27:41] how many different automation I
[00:27:42] have available to run
[00:27:44] how many apps I have opened at one time.
[00:27:47] Like these are all the kind of
[00:27:49] moving parts
[00:27:50] that actually affect the bottom line
[00:27:51] cost to Airtable of a base functioning
[00:27:54] and that's what their model should be
[00:27:56] built more towards because if it's set to
[00:27:58] the user model
[00:27:59] I'm gonna be very frank here.
[00:28:01] I have a couple of clients
[00:28:02] where I have three
[00:28:03] users in the base
[00:28:05] me and the two point contacts
[00:28:07] of that business.
[00:28:08] And then one client has
[00:28:09] 1300 users
[00:28:10] using an external system
[00:28:12] which I'm not gonna name.
[00:28:14] But they're using an
[00:28:16] external amazing front end
[00:28:17] that has roles and
[00:28:18] permissions
[00:28:19] and it's amazing
[00:28:20] how much has been
[00:28:22] accomplished in that portal.
[00:28:23] But they're paying Airtable $70
[00:28:26] a month for this base.
[00:28:28] And they're paying
[00:28:29] this other one say $300 $400
[00:28:31] they're paying Zapier
[00:28:32] and all these things.
[00:28:33] They're total stack is
[00:28:35] you know maybe $500 a month. And
[00:28:39] they would be paying
[00:28:40] if Airtable got them into their model,
[00:28:42] they'd be paying
[00:28:43] thousands and thousands
[00:28:44] of dollars per month and it just
[00:28:45] doesn't make any sense.
[00:28:46] We don't want users in Airtable
[00:28:48] and interfaces was
[00:28:48] kind of their
[00:28:50] first attempt to do this
[00:28:52] and it's kind of
[00:28:53] not there yet, it's still in beta,
[00:28:55] but I think they need to get
[00:28:57] the economic model right
[00:28:58] and it's in our interest
[00:28:59] that they actually do that
[00:29:00] because I want Airtable to survive.
[00:29:01] I want them to be extremely profitable.
[00:29:03] I want to pay for that base that has
[00:29:05] 1300 users using it all day.
[00:29:07] I want to pay for that base
[00:29:09] based on how much it's being used
[00:29:11] and convince my
[00:29:11] clients that it's worth to pay Airtable
[00:29:13] $300 a month for this base or
[00:29:15] $1000 a month for this base
[00:29:17] based on how complex it is. So
[00:29:19] yeah, yeah, this topic
[00:29:21] could go on forever.
[00:29:22] Alli any final thoughts?
[00:29:26] I mean I think
[00:29:28] I noticed Scott in the comments wrote
[00:29:30] that mini extensions doesn't charge
[00:29:32] per head.
[00:29:33] I mean that's,
[00:29:34] that's like probably
[00:29:36] where I usually go to.
[00:29:37] I mean apps like Stackr
[00:29:39] are I think have a better look
[00:29:41] and feel softer of
[00:29:42] course has a very nice look and feel.
[00:29:44] But mini intentions, I love
[00:29:46] simplicity of being able
[00:29:48] to just have a form to edit
[00:29:49] the existing records and
[00:29:50] you can hook that up to a portal.
[00:29:52] I mean
[00:29:53] outward simplicity,
[00:29:54] it's not the easiest app
[00:29:56] to learn how to use,
[00:29:56] but
[00:29:57] I find it the most powerful and that's
[00:30:00] generally my
[00:30:01] work around for not having
[00:30:03] to pay for so many users,
[00:30:05] Jen is recommending pori
[00:30:07] for display purposes,
[00:30:09] not necessarily edit purposes
[00:30:11] and they all as you know,
[00:30:13] I'm sure you've gathered
[00:30:15] eat every single one of these
[00:30:17] platforms is really good
[00:30:19] at one particular thing
[00:30:21] or one set of things and
[00:30:23] you know, Airtable of course
[00:30:25] is really good at being
[00:30:26] the back end for all of
[00:30:27] those things. It would be
[00:30:29] very nice if eventually
[00:30:31] interfaces was grew into something
[00:30:34] that could take on some
[00:30:35] of what we have to rely on
[00:30:37] portals to do.
[00:30:39] And Charlie, as you said,
[00:30:41] a good portion of that
[00:30:42] has to do with permissions
[00:30:43] because you still have to be a
[00:30:44] collaborator in the base.
[00:30:46] So you could separate out
[00:30:48] those permissions
[00:30:49] in some
[00:30:49] way or
[00:30:51] work out a different pricing structure
[00:30:53] for the base versus the interface that
[00:30:55] connects to it.
[00:30:56] I think that would help.
[00:30:57] But in the interim
[00:30:59] it is, there's a point where it
[00:31:01] doesn't make sense to have your
[00:31:03] collaborators in Airtable anymore.
[00:31:05] Yeah,
[00:31:07] All right, let's move on
[00:31:09] that topic we can spend hours
[00:31:11] talking about this but
[00:31:12] definitely room for improvement
[00:31:14] on Airtable's side and hopefully they're
[00:31:16] thinking about it.
[00:31:17] One more.
[00:31:18] One more final one from Twitter
[00:31:20] and then we'll move on.
[00:31:21] I want to definitely hear Charlie's story,
[00:31:24] but I thought this was cool.
[00:31:25] I think we've talked about Mike Cardona
[00:31:28] a couple of times.
[00:31:29] He actually tweeted about us
[00:31:30] talking about him on the podcast,
[00:31:32] so
[00:31:32] we're gonna give them another shout out.
[00:31:35] I just thought this was cool.
[00:31:37] Somebody who has a decent sized following,
[00:31:39] I don't know who it is,
[00:31:41] Arvid call said, hey,
[00:31:42] I'm trying to figure out
[00:31:44] how to build a newsletter.
[00:31:46] Any ideas, what would you use?
[00:31:47] I'm currently using Calendly
[00:31:49] and it's not
[00:31:50] working. And Mike reached out
[00:31:52] and said, hey,
[00:31:53] I'll build it for you for free
[00:31:54] in Airtable.
[00:31:55] I wanted to do something
[00:31:57] kind of along these lines and it
[00:31:59] looks like
[00:32:01] you might get the gig
[00:32:02] obviously free is hard to
[00:32:04] argue with.
[00:32:05] But anyways, if you see somebody post,
[00:32:08] if you're looking to get
[00:32:10] into consulting
[00:32:11] and you see somebody
[00:32:13] with a decent sized following
[00:32:15] and they post,
[00:32:15] like looking for ways to solve a problem,
[00:32:18] go ahead and and say you'll build a
[00:32:20] form for free in Airtable
[00:32:22] and a good way to get some free publicity,
[00:32:25] I assume
[00:32:26] if he does well, this guy will,
[00:32:28] will give him a shout out
[00:32:29] to his following.
[00:32:31] So good stuff.
[00:32:33] So that wraps up our
[00:32:34] Round the Bases
[00:32:35] and what's going on in the
[00:32:37] Airtable communities
[00:32:39] for our On2Air spotlight
[00:32:41] On2Air's a primary sponsor.
[00:32:43] It's an all in one toolkit
[00:32:45] to run your business on Airtable,
[00:32:46] it's a suite of apps
[00:32:47] that do a variety of different things.
[00:32:49] One of the things
[00:32:51] that it does
[00:32:52] is it integrates with Google
[00:32:54] Google docs,
[00:32:54] Google sheets and Google slides
[00:32:56] as part of our On2Air Actions
[00:32:59] app or product.
[00:33:01] And I just wanted to read a
[00:33:04] email that we got
[00:33:05] over the weekend
[00:33:06] from one of our customers.
[00:33:07] Andrew, he just says,
[00:33:09] I want to emphasize
[00:33:10] how wonderfully helpful
[00:33:12] I found On2Air Actions.
[00:33:13] I so wish I found this sooner.
[00:33:14] Can't tell you how
[00:33:15] advantageous it has been to my work
[00:33:18] there's some things
[00:33:19] I'm using it for
[00:33:20] and he lists out four different use
[00:33:22] cases
[00:33:22] to produce schedules as a pdf
[00:33:25] group by dates.
[00:33:26] I love the conditional
[00:33:27] formatting.
[00:33:28] That alone is invaluable
[00:33:30] trucking schedules
[00:33:32] group by truck members
[00:33:33] and product object info sheets.
[00:33:36] I won't go through all of them,
[00:33:38] but he uses both our
[00:33:40] Google docs integration
[00:33:41] and our Google sheets.
[00:33:43] I don't think he's using Google slides.
[00:33:45] But now he's building a
[00:33:47] budget base,
[00:33:48] syncing his data from Airtable into a
[00:33:50] Google sheets
[00:33:51] that he's been trying to get to
[00:33:54] his finance director and now can
[00:33:56] automate that entire process.
[00:33:58] So each of them
[00:33:59] are invaluable to me and my
[00:34:01] business, so cool,
[00:34:02] shout out from Andrew,
[00:34:04] appreciate the love and support.
[00:34:05] He's been great to work with and
[00:34:08] we've added some features
[00:34:10] that we named after him
[00:34:12] because he suggested the idea.
[00:34:13] So if that's of interest
[00:34:16] check it out in
[00:34:17] On2Air on2air.com
[00:34:19] so are Google integrations
[00:34:20] right now are a little bit hard to find.
[00:34:22] We're gonna work on
[00:34:23] making those more prominent,
[00:34:25] but right now they're,
[00:34:26] they're inside of our
[00:34:28] On2Air Actions app and
[00:34:30] allow you to use Google docs
[00:34:33] as your template engine
[00:34:34] to generate and automate
[00:34:36] document creation
[00:34:38] with that.
[00:34:39] Now we're gonna learn more about
[00:34:41] Charlie and we're gonna have Alli
[00:34:43] talk to him and we can learn more.
[00:34:46] Excellent, awesome.
[00:34:47] Well thank you again,
[00:34:49] Charlie for joining us.
[00:34:51] Thanks nice to be here.
[00:34:52] I'm a big fan of the show
[00:34:54] and yeah, looking forward to
[00:34:55] it,
[00:34:56] awesome.
[00:34:57] Yeah, we're well,
[00:34:58] I'm pretty sure you and I
[00:35:00] have pretty similar back stories
[00:35:01] when it comes to Airtable.
[00:35:03] I know we both were
[00:35:04] doing some stuff with it for our
[00:35:05] family businesses
[00:35:07] also have trucks in common
[00:35:09] that along with Rebecca I believe.
[00:35:11] and Dan's customer.
[00:35:13] So, trucks are everywhere.
[00:35:16] It was a party business,
[00:35:18] is that correct?
[00:35:19] Yeah. Event rentals.
[00:35:20] So here in Miami we do the events like
[00:35:22] tables, chairs, tents,
[00:35:24] cooking equipment
[00:35:25] for the super bowl when it comes to
[00:35:27] town and
[00:35:28] yeah, all sorts of stuff like that.
[00:35:31] That's super cool. So I
[00:35:33] know you were the one
[00:35:34] that actually introduced me
[00:35:36] to mini extensions years ago,
[00:35:38] which I consider you
[00:35:40] the mini extensions king for sure,
[00:35:42] I think was that really
[00:35:44] kind of like,
[00:35:45] was that your turning point
[00:35:46] for with Airtable or did you did
[00:35:48] you have the bug before that?
[00:35:50] So my dad one day
[00:35:51] came to my office in the middle
[00:35:52] of Covid.
[00:35:53] I actually also blamed Covid
[00:35:54] for this because otherwise I would have
[00:35:56] been too busy
[00:35:57] with my day to day job
[00:35:58] to ever even go down this rabbit hole.
[00:36:00] And my dad came to my office
[00:36:02] and said I want you to build
[00:36:03] a database for our
[00:36:04] tenting department.
[00:36:05] And I was like a database.
[00:36:07] Why not just a spreadsheet? Like you know,
[00:36:09] all he wanted was someone
[00:36:10] to search a tent
[00:36:11] and see what bag it goes into
[00:36:12] the color and everything.
[00:36:13] And like you can just
[00:36:14] a spreadsheet
[00:36:15] and do control F and it will find it.
[00:36:16] And he's like,
[00:36:17] it has to be a database
[00:36:18] where someone enters it and then they
[00:36:19] click search and it pulls it up
[00:36:21] and my brain was just flexing
[00:36:22] in ways that had never flexed before.
[00:36:24] And I'm like what,
[00:36:25] what is the database?
[00:36:26] And I looked into like,
[00:36:26] filemaker Pro smart sheets.
[00:36:28] And I got all these like
[00:36:30] high level sales people
[00:36:31] trying to get me to pay
[00:36:32] thousands of dollars
[00:36:33] and they couldn't even give me an
[00:36:34] example of it working.
[00:36:36] And one day I reached out to a
[00:36:39] a friend of mine,
[00:36:40] Austin Bunsen shout out Austin,
[00:36:42] he's an amazing developer
[00:36:44] and startup founder
[00:36:45] at y Combinator right now
[00:36:47] and he said you should probably
[00:36:48] use Airtable
[00:36:50] and I imported my filemaker pro
[00:36:52] spreadsheet into Airtable and
[00:36:55] the like the light bulb
[00:36:56] just went off
[00:36:57] and it was magic. And I had all of these
[00:37:00] these processes, these ideas,
[00:37:02] these concepts from the business.
[00:37:04] So you know our business
[00:37:05] had really good software,
[00:37:07] like really good expensive
[00:37:08] software, but in a big operation
[00:37:10] you have all these
[00:37:11] middle operations that don't
[00:37:13] get addressed by that big software
[00:37:15] and you have all these ideas
[00:37:16] because you're in the operation
[00:37:18] and so you're like
[00:37:18] it wouldn't it be amazing
[00:37:19] if we had this process or this app?
[00:37:21] That's how you would say
[00:37:22] five years ago
[00:37:23] that would do this
[00:37:24] when I input this,
[00:37:24] this would happen.
[00:37:26] So I had all these ideas and
[00:37:28] the first one that hit me was
[00:37:30] the truck inspection app
[00:37:32] if you want to share
[00:37:33] that Dan.
[00:37:35] So I had this idea of why not
[00:37:38] you know our trucks
[00:37:39] were coming back with damage
[00:37:41] to the trucks, you know,
[00:37:43] almost every other week
[00:37:45] and I had no clue who was doing
[00:37:46] the damage because by the time
[00:37:48] you find the damage,
[00:37:49] you know the drivers aren't
[00:37:50] telling you I had a tree,
[00:37:51] you know, it rains,
[00:37:52] the trees get lower and you're
[00:37:53] going through a street
[00:37:54] in a nice neighborhood
[00:37:55] and boom it hits the top of the
[00:37:56] thing and that costs $1,000 to fix.
[00:37:59] So I said okay let me
[00:38:01] let me build a form with a Q. R. Code.
[00:38:03] You'll see that each of my trucks
[00:38:06] has this Q. R. Code on it
[00:38:07] that right there if you can see it
[00:38:10] that assumes not working so well.
[00:38:12] So when the driver
[00:38:13] just walks up to the truck
[00:38:14] scans it with a smartphone.
[00:38:15] They don't need an app on their phone,
[00:38:17] right? I don't want to
[00:38:18] have to maintain apps.
[00:38:19] They scan that QR code.
[00:38:21] It pulls up this form.
[00:38:23] It's a basic Airtable form and
[00:38:24] it already pre fills that truck.
[00:38:26] They indicate who
[00:38:28] they are
[00:38:28] they indicate
[00:38:29] yes they have the license
[00:38:30] registration
[00:38:31] is the cabin clean?
[00:38:31] If they put no,
[00:38:32] it makes them take a picture.
[00:38:34] You know the tires in good
[00:38:35] condition.
[00:38:35] So this is basically like an F. D. O. T.
[00:38:38] Form for trucks.
[00:38:40] And if there was damage
[00:38:41] to the truck
[00:38:43] then we get a notification on the back end
[00:38:45] Immediately
[00:38:46] or if the cabin is not clean
[00:38:48] or anything like that we get
[00:38:49] notifications. Which has become invaluable
[00:38:52] because we're getting notifications
[00:38:54] as soon as there's damage
[00:38:55] and I can immediately go
[00:38:56] to the history of that truck
[00:38:58] and say okay on this day
[00:39:00] you know was there damage
[00:39:01] on this day? No there wasn't damage.
[00:39:03] Was there damage on this day?
[00:39:04] Yes there's damage
[00:39:05] okay who was driving the truck
[00:39:07] the day before And like we're
[00:39:08] able to pinpoint
[00:39:09] who is the person who's responsible.
[00:39:11] So like this was the first half
[00:39:13] and I haven't touched
[00:39:15] this base for two years.
[00:39:16] I built this two years ago,
[00:39:18] it's still working flawlessly.
[00:39:20] That's the other beautiful thing
[00:39:21] about Airtable is
[00:39:21] it's not like you have to
[00:39:22] maintain these systems
[00:39:23] that you build if you do it right,
[00:39:25] like you can do something this,
[00:39:27] maybe it took me a day
[00:39:28] or two right to come up
[00:39:29] with the right form
[00:39:30] to print out the Q. R. Codes.
[00:39:31] Like I don't have to change
[00:39:32] anything. So that's another like
[00:39:34] really amazing thing
[00:39:35] about Airtable and this
[00:39:36] base has become so invaluable.
[00:39:38] We also do load inspection.
[00:39:40] So every time a truck
[00:39:41] is loaded or unloaded,
[00:39:43] if anything fell in the truck,
[00:39:44] we get notified,
[00:39:45] the driver didn't strap it
[00:39:46] correctly before
[00:39:46] that'd be like a buddy system
[00:39:48] where people wouldn't really
[00:39:49] tell on each other.
[00:39:50] But the really cool thing here
[00:39:52] and this goes to Rebecca's point is
[00:39:54] about saving time.
[00:39:55] My
[00:39:57] We have about 150 employees.
[00:40:00] And of those employees,
[00:40:01] about 80 of them
[00:40:02] have different schedules every day and
[00:40:04] they can have to show up
[00:40:06] at four in the morning
[00:40:07] at seven in the morning.
[00:40:07] And it was a really big nightmare.
[00:40:09] How do we tell them
[00:40:10] what you're scheduled for
[00:40:11] tomorrow.
[00:40:12] And so we've been around
[00:40:14] for 30 plus years at this point.
[00:40:15] And we've always used this system
[00:40:17] using a voicemail. So my dispatcher
[00:40:19] would set up the schedules
[00:40:21] and then he would use a phone
[00:40:23] a cell phone
[00:40:24] and record a voice mail saying,
[00:40:25] you know, John four in the morning.
[00:40:28] Albert four in the morning Rogelio 4 15.
[00:40:31] And he'd go through this list
[00:40:32] of 80 people
[00:40:33] and there's only like a minute and a
[00:40:34] half that you can use in a voicemail.
[00:40:36] So you have to like rush through it if it
[00:40:37] was a long list
[00:40:38] and if you messed up, you have to redo it.
[00:40:40] And then you can imagine
[00:40:42] the employees
[00:40:43] they have to call every night and wait
[00:40:45] the whole list
[00:40:46] to listen to their name,
[00:40:47] paying attention.
[00:40:48] And if they don't hear
[00:40:48] their name, maybe they're like,
[00:40:50] am I off the clock tomorrow
[00:40:52] or do I have to call again?
[00:40:53] So it was just this
[00:40:54] system that worked
[00:40:56] right.
[00:40:56] But it also took like an hour,
[00:40:58] hour and a half to do
[00:40:59] the schedule
[00:41:00] to put onto this paper
[00:41:01] and then translate to
[00:41:02] another paper to then
[00:41:03] record this voicemail.
[00:41:04] So it's like an hour and a half
[00:41:05] that it took this process.
[00:41:07] Well, one day I showed up
[00:41:08] and the trucks were late,
[00:41:10] they hadn't left yet.
[00:41:11] And I asked the load master,
[00:41:12] like, what's the hold up?
[00:41:13] Why are the trucks left?
[00:41:15] And he said, because David
[00:41:16] didn't show up on time,
[00:41:17] he should have showed up at six
[00:41:18] in the morning and he showed up at eight.
[00:41:19] So I walked over to David
[00:41:20] and David, I said to David,
[00:41:22] like, why didn't you show
[00:41:22] up at six?
[00:41:23] And he's like,
[00:41:24] I always show up at eight,
[00:41:26] I never have to show up at six.
[00:41:27] So I never call into
[00:41:28] the phone number
[00:41:29] because I always show up at eight
[00:41:31] and it hit me in that moment.
[00:41:32] Like I need to build a system
[00:41:34] that notifies David
[00:41:36] what his time is and not the
[00:41:37] other way around
[00:41:38] where he can give me that type
[00:41:40] of excuse and be right actually.
[00:41:41] So I went
[00:41:43] to dispatcher,
[00:41:44] I said show me when you schedule it,
[00:41:45] what is the output looking a
[00:41:47] CSP I got that output
[00:41:49] and I created this simple view
[00:41:51] where all they're doing
[00:41:53] is pasting right now
[00:41:54] it's obviously blank
[00:41:55] because they'd be pasting for tomorrow,
[00:41:57] but they're simply
[00:41:57] pasting the schedule
[00:41:59] that they have on this other system
[00:42:02] into Airtable and it
[00:42:03] sends text messages to everybody.
[00:42:05] So hey alexander your schedule tomorrow,
[00:42:07] Tuesday June 14th at eight a.m.
[00:42:09] And it says it in Spanish
[00:42:11] too
[00:42:11] English and Spanish.
[00:42:12] So now there's no excuse
[00:42:14] every single day
[00:42:15] my employees get a text message saying
[00:42:17] you're like, this is your schedule
[00:42:19] or it says like you're not scheduled,
[00:42:21] it's very clear,
[00:42:22] Hey Robert,
[00:42:22] you're not scheduled for June 14
[00:42:24] And I mean to this point
[00:42:26] we've sent up 23,000 text messages
[00:42:29] in the past like
[00:42:30] year and a half.
[00:42:31] So this is another system
[00:42:32] that I set up, it took me maybe an
[00:42:33] hour to set up
[00:42:34] and I haven't had to touch
[00:42:36] and it saved an hour and a half per
[00:42:37] day because to do this
[00:42:38] maybe takes 10 minutes
[00:42:39] to the schedule and just simply
[00:42:40] paste the CSB
[00:42:42] So this is another like
[00:42:44] really interesting example.
[00:42:45] Then I got to the point
[00:42:47] where I had to
[00:42:48] build some more complicated systems
[00:42:50] and that's when I found mini
[00:42:51] extensions Alli,
[00:42:53] and you know usually hold off
[00:42:55] on paying for these add on
[00:42:56] solutions until you have a really good
[00:42:58] use case and I had one
[00:43:00] and it just blew my mind
[00:43:01] how powerful it was.
[00:43:03] And then I remember
[00:43:04] that conversation when I showed it to you
[00:43:06] and the people
[00:43:06] over at gap consulting and
[00:43:08] yeah it is that powerful and
[00:43:11] I can show you one other use case
[00:43:12] for mini extensions.
[00:43:14] That's kind of what
[00:43:15] brought me to Airtable.
[00:43:16] But like seven years ago
[00:43:18] I started a product
[00:43:19] in the parking ticket world.
[00:43:21] So you know you get a parking
[00:43:23] ticket on your car,
[00:43:24] you show up the parking tickets there,
[00:43:26] you have to take it
[00:43:27] into your car.
[00:43:28] You have to look at it with guilt
[00:43:30] and you have to like think
[00:43:31] about what could have been
[00:43:33] and then you put it
[00:43:34] on the side of your car
[00:43:34] And you can't pay for it immediately
[00:43:36] because it's not in the database yet.
[00:43:38] So you have to wait like 24-48 hours
[00:43:40] for it to even enter the database.
[00:43:42] So you have this period of guilt
[00:43:44] that then turns into neglect
[00:43:46] because you kind
[00:43:46] of like just leave it there
[00:43:47] and you're like, I'm not gonna pay for it,
[00:43:48] I still have 20 days, right?
[00:43:50] And then 35 days go by
[00:43:51] and you go and you look and
[00:43:53] you're like, oh my God,
[00:43:54] I forgot to pay that parking ticket.
[00:43:55] And now it's gone from $36 to $72.
[00:43:58] So a friend of mine
[00:44:00] and I came up with the idea,
[00:44:02] why don't we build an app
[00:44:04] that scrapes the city database
[00:44:06] and automatically pays
[00:44:08] that parking ticket for you
[00:44:09] and just simply notifies you.
[00:44:10] So literally you can
[00:44:11] walk up to your car,
[00:44:12] grab the parking ticket
[00:44:13] and throw it away and you'll get an
[00:44:14] email two days later
[00:44:15] with a receipt from the city
[00:44:16] saying, you know,
[00:44:16] you just paid this parking ticket,
[00:44:18] that's it.
[00:44:19] So we built it, we got like
[00:44:21] 100 200 of our friends
[00:44:23] and family to sign up.
[00:44:24] And one day I was walking past a
[00:44:25] dealership
[00:44:27] and this is one of the biggest dealerships
[00:44:29] in Miami and I'm like,
[00:44:30] they have loaner fleets
[00:44:31] and loaner fleets
[00:44:32] have the ethical dilemma of,
[00:44:34] you know, I'm borrowing this car,
[00:44:36] I'm getting a parking ticket,
[00:44:37] I don't care, right,
[00:44:39] it's not gonna affect me.
[00:44:40] So I walked in and I went to the
[00:44:41] loaner fleet manager and said,
[00:44:43] do you guys have an issue
[00:44:44] with parking tickets?
[00:44:45] And he's like, yeah, why?
[00:44:46] And I'm like, well
[00:44:47] I have this system that can notify
[00:44:49] you whenever a parking ticket
[00:44:51] is issued like within 24 hours.
[00:44:53] And his his Jaw dropped,
[00:44:54] his eyes just open. He's like wait really?
[00:44:56] Are you have you built that?
[00:44:58] I'm like yeah it exists. And he said Okay.
[00:45:00] And he took me to the finance manager,
[00:45:03] we resolved the price point and he ended
[00:45:05] up giving me their list of 750 vehicles.
[00:45:07] I took that and I went to every other
[00:45:09] dealership in Miami.
[00:45:11] And because that was the
[00:45:12] biggest dealership
[00:45:13] they all that was like the name
[00:45:14] recognition I needed
[00:45:15] and they all had the same problem.
[00:45:17] I was able to get like
[00:45:19] three and a half thousand vehicles of
[00:45:20] loaner fleets.
[00:45:21] And then I started like
[00:45:22] going after rental cars right?
[00:45:24] And I had to build this
[00:45:25] with the developer,
[00:45:26] the same developer who I get a shout
[00:45:28] out to earlier actually Austin Bunsen
[00:45:30] and he built an amazing system.
[00:45:34] Recently though I wanted
[00:45:35] now that I've gotten pretty good
[00:45:37] at Airtable,
[00:45:37] I wanted to see if I can replicate this
[00:45:39] in Airtable. So rather than being a
[00:45:40] code based platform,
[00:45:42] can I replicate this system in Airtable.
[00:45:44] So I used a scraping no code
[00:45:46] solution to scrape the city database
[00:45:50] with my CSV list
[00:45:52] and I have
[00:45:54] this base here that
[00:45:56] basically my users
[00:45:58] have these has a portal.
[00:46:01] So this is a mini extensions portal,
[00:46:03] an example of what you can do
[00:46:04] with mini extensions
[00:46:04] where a user goes
[00:46:05] and it's very simple.
[00:46:07] All they have is my vehicles and my
[00:46:08] violations and they can add vehicles.
[00:46:11] So they add new vehicles to their fleet.
[00:46:13] They are able to, you know,
[00:46:14] put in some information
[00:46:15] and now they're adding to
[00:46:16] their vehicle list fleet.
[00:46:18] And they can go at any point
[00:46:20] and see their overall breakdown
[00:46:23] of vehicles and
[00:46:23] how much is due
[00:46:24] or their violations
[00:46:26] because the city doesn't give you this
[00:46:28] portal access.
[00:46:29] This portal view across
[00:46:31] my whole fleet of 700 vehicles and look
[00:46:33] at how many vehicles
[00:46:34] are referred to collection. Like
[00:46:36] there's so many reasons
[00:46:37] why this is such a good idea.
[00:46:38] But there's cars,
[00:46:39] this is a lot of money
[00:46:40] in terms of late fees,
[00:46:41] it affects their credit
[00:46:42] and if you get five tickets,
[00:46:44] the car gets towed.
[00:46:45] So like imagine these people
[00:46:46] using a loaner vehicle
[00:46:47] that gets towed while they're using it
[00:46:48] or a rental car.
[00:46:49] So anyways,
[00:46:50] this is an example of how you
[00:46:52] can build that in Airtable and on
[00:46:53] top of it with
[00:46:55] mini extensions. So yeah, that's
[00:46:57] kind of how I got into it
[00:46:59] very, very cool.
[00:47:01] Yeah, just chock full of more
[00:47:03] and more use cases
[00:47:04] every time I talk to you.
[00:47:05] That's just really the,
[00:47:09] that is such a good use case
[00:47:12] at a good story.
[00:47:13] I would clarify for folks who
[00:47:16] are unfamiliar.
[00:47:17] We are currently looking at a
[00:47:19] mini extensions portal just so
[00:47:20] that they're aware.
[00:47:22] And it's also just a good sort of
[00:47:26] look at, we were talking earlier about,
[00:47:28] or I was talking earlier about the event
[00:47:30] horizon and imagining,
[00:47:31] I don't know how many different
[00:47:33] dealerships that you have
[00:47:35] in there, but you certainly
[00:47:37] don't want to give,
[00:47:38] you know Toyota a look at
[00:47:40] Chevy's trucks. That would be,
[00:47:44] you know, it would seem
[00:47:45] like a recipe for disaster. And so
[00:47:47] it's sort of a use case like this
[00:47:50] necessitates using an external portal
[00:47:53] and it
[00:47:53] just makes it,
[00:47:55] it seems so easy
[00:47:56] just to look at what is,
[00:47:58] you only want to look at my stuff
[00:48:00] or specifically this car
[00:48:02] or specifically this violation.
[00:48:05] Yeah. So you have that
[00:48:06] search function up here
[00:48:07] and I do off of your point Kamille,
[00:48:09] like,
[00:48:10] yeah, this is a perfect example
[00:48:11] if you don't want Toyota
[00:48:13] and them in your Airtable base,
[00:48:14] like think about how crazy
[00:48:15] and messed up the world it has to be in.
[00:48:17] If I actually made them users,
[00:48:18] which is what Airtable
[00:48:19] technically wants me to
[00:48:20] do right?
[00:48:21] If I'm a Airtable developer.
[00:48:24] but there's also options, right?
[00:48:26] So I could have gone fancy
[00:48:28] and made a Stackr
[00:48:29] portal or I could have gone fancy
[00:48:31] made a softer portal, but it's really just
[00:48:33] about utility.
[00:48:33] My customers don't need fancy.
[00:48:35] They want straightforward
[00:48:36] simplicity. It's usually a clerk
[00:48:38] who's even looking at this,
[00:48:38] not the, you know, fancy finance person
[00:48:41] who gave me the contract,
[00:48:43] it's usually someone else
[00:48:44] who just needs very clear,
[00:48:45] I'm going to this website,
[00:48:46] it's taking me in automatically,
[00:48:48] they don't have to have even
[00:48:49] log in functionality,
[00:48:50] it's in the U. R. L.
[00:48:51] And they're simply just
[00:48:52] typing in a thing there.
[00:48:53] Again they're able to add stuff,
[00:48:55] they're getting notifications
[00:48:56] every day via
[00:48:56] text message and email when they get
[00:48:59] violation. So
[00:49:01] yeah.
[00:49:02] Yeah super super cool
[00:49:05] bravo.
[00:49:06] Thank you.
[00:49:08] Yeah looking forward to learning more
[00:49:10] about ProfitGrab in a few minutes,
[00:49:13] awesome. Yeah Charlie appreciate,
[00:49:15] love hearing your story and how you've
[00:49:18] progressed. And now
[00:49:20] you've got a product out there
[00:49:23] and built on Airtable
[00:49:24] and you're gonna walk us through that
[00:49:28] so we'll move on to our base showcase on
[00:49:31] profit, grab,
[00:49:33] share your screen.
[00:49:34] Yeah so similar to the other impetus
[00:49:38] for what led to the other me even finding
[00:49:42] Airtable,
[00:49:43] I have to credit my dad,
[00:49:45] so my dad one day came to me and said
[00:49:47] can you build me something?
[00:49:49] He was trading in cryptocurrencies
[00:49:51] and stocks,
[00:49:51] Can you build, can you build me something
[00:49:53] that when my Cryptocurrency goes down
[00:49:55] 5%
[00:49:56] I just got a text message
[00:49:57] saying hey you gotta go buy
[00:49:59] this Cryptocurrency
[00:50:00] and it even calculates
[00:50:01] the value and everything
[00:50:03] and I love when people come to me with
[00:50:06] hey can you build this on Airtable?
[00:50:08] I mean it's just it's the happiest moment
[00:50:10] of the day when people do that
[00:50:11] because it's like
[00:50:12] extremely rarely, almost never
[00:50:15] can you do you say no to that
[00:50:16] because everything
[00:50:17] is pretty much possible.
[00:50:20] So like within an hour,
[00:50:21] hour and a half
[00:50:22] I had set up, you know I was pulling
[00:50:24] Cryptocurrency prices,
[00:50:26] I had set up the schema
[00:50:27] to work functionally and I was
[00:50:29] sending notifications to him,
[00:50:31] the notifications kind of look like this.
[00:50:33] So these are the text messages
[00:50:34] that go out.
[00:50:35] So I would say something like
[00:50:36] hey there you know this is
[00:50:38] a bi notice for this
[00:50:39] currency,
[00:50:40] This is the price that you
[00:50:42] originally purchased at right now.
[00:50:43] In this case it's 17% down.
[00:50:46] You've used $5,000 out
[00:50:49] of your $10,000 budget.
[00:50:51] You know there's a 56%
[00:50:52] variance between your top purchase
[00:50:54] and what it is right
[00:50:55] now. So I'm giving all these
[00:50:56] like data points that was helping him
[00:50:58] determine if he did want to buy it
[00:50:59] at that moment or if you wanted to wait a
[00:51:00] little bit
[00:51:01] and then he would have to go
[00:51:04] into his exchange
[00:51:05] to buy the currency to buy it and
[00:51:08] then come back to a form
[00:51:09] that I have here where
[00:51:10] a mini extensions form right
[00:51:12] that he would click
[00:51:13] and he'd enter the data
[00:51:15] as to what he purchased.
[00:51:17] Then I had the realization like
[00:51:18] what about if I could actually
[00:51:20] place the trades
[00:51:21] directly on the exchange for him
[00:51:23] versus him having to place it
[00:51:25] and then come
[00:51:25] back
[00:51:26] in the middle of the night,
[00:51:27] he was waking up at two
[00:51:29] in the morning excited to
[00:51:30] see like hey you gotta
[00:51:31] sell this for a 10% profit
[00:51:33] and he'd be like
[00:51:33] I get all the notifications
[00:51:35] for all my users,
[00:51:36] so I would see him actually like
[00:51:37] doing this at one a.m.
[00:51:38] Two a.m. in the morning,
[00:51:40] I'd also be excited.
[00:51:41] This was like when the kryptos
[00:51:42] we're all going up to now
[00:51:43] it's not the case.
[00:51:46] And so then I started talking
[00:51:48] to a developer really close friend of mine
[00:51:52] And we ended up connecting Airtable
[00:51:55] to crack in which is one of the major
[00:51:57] exchanges
[00:51:58] and that opened up so much
[00:52:01] potential and opportunity which has led to
[00:52:05] ProfitGrab
[00:52:05] so I'll kind of like
[00:52:07] give you a brief overview,
[00:52:08] so we have these 25
[00:52:09] cryptocurrencies.
[00:52:10] They're updating the prices
[00:52:12] every 30 seconds,
[00:52:13] so you'll see like the last update
[00:52:15] over here.
[00:52:16] That's its own,
[00:52:17] all of these are like mini stories right?
[00:52:19] I first used
[00:52:20] how do you get the pricing data
[00:52:23] to be as close to live as possible.
[00:52:26] I found pipe dream
[00:52:27] pipe dream is really good
[00:52:28] because you can connect to any API
[00:52:30] And I was able to connect to a good
[00:52:33] source like for pricing
[00:52:34] but pipe dream if I
[00:52:35] was doing it every
[00:52:36] so there you go see it's updating
[00:52:38] pipe dream would charge me
[00:52:40] came onto like $120 for every
[00:52:42] two minutes refresh times
[00:52:44] And if you think about it
[00:52:45] you go from two minutes to one minute,
[00:52:47] that's double the amount of searches.
[00:52:49] So it would go from
[00:52:50] $100 to $200
[00:52:51] and if I went from there to 30 seconds
[00:52:53] now it becomes $400
[00:52:55] in those multiples.
[00:52:57] But we were able to
[00:52:59] build our own kind of like
[00:53:01] server that was pinging crack
[00:53:03] and eventually that's
[00:53:03] the optimal solution
[00:53:05] now just in case anybody's interested
[00:53:07] that's pinging
[00:53:08] Kraken who has a publicly exposed
[00:53:10] price A. P. I.
[00:53:11] And just pushing it to Airtable
[00:53:13] every 30 seconds.
[00:53:14] So it's not using any
[00:53:15] Airtable automations,
[00:53:15] it's not using any third party sources,
[00:53:17] it's probably costing
[00:53:19] I don't know $5 per month
[00:53:21] in terms of how much data
[00:53:22] processing it's using.
[00:53:24] So it's bringing over
[00:53:26] the prices every 30 seconds
[00:53:28] and then users have this interface
[00:53:30] so this is built on Stackr.
[00:53:32] I love Stackr,
[00:53:34] it's probably my preferred
[00:53:37] go to for a nice third party
[00:53:40] login functionality
[00:53:42] and people can you know
[00:53:43] update their information some basic
[00:53:46] stuff,
[00:53:47] they can go then to their coins.
[00:53:49] So in this case
[00:53:50] you probably add a new coin.
[00:53:51] So I want to now create a position for
[00:53:54] say Bitcoin something
[00:53:55] that everybody understands,
[00:53:57] you then go and
[00:53:58] you set your risk settings.
[00:54:00] So I want to purchase every like I
[00:54:02] only want to purchase 15 positions total.
[00:54:04] That's pretty conservative right?
[00:54:06] Or I only want to purchase five
[00:54:07] that's really aggressive
[00:54:09] because you can only
[00:54:09] buy five times if it goes down
[00:54:12] so let's keep it up
[00:54:13] conservative 15 how much
[00:54:14] budget the budget's gonna be $10,000
[00:54:18] and then there's advanced settings.
[00:54:20] So the advanced settings is
[00:54:22] By default I set it at 5%
[00:54:23] 5%. So if you think about it
[00:54:25] you get into your first
[00:54:26] position.
[00:54:27] If it goes down 5%
[00:54:28] it buys another position.
[00:54:30] Remember you have up to 15
[00:54:31] positions because that
[00:54:32] was what you selected
[00:54:33] Then if it goes down another 5%
[00:54:35] it gets into your next position
[00:54:37] Then imagine from there it goes up 5%.
[00:54:40] Okay now you got out of your lowest
[00:54:42] position it's sold
[00:54:43] and it captured that close profits
[00:54:45] then it goes up again
[00:54:45] another 5% it's sold
[00:54:47] and got out of that.
[00:54:49] So I call this capturing the
[00:54:51] forgetting the word
[00:54:55] entropy of the market.
[00:54:56] The random fluctuations.
[00:54:58] You're all day all night you're
[00:55:00] the bot is capturing all of these
[00:55:01] waves that are happening.
[00:55:03] It's getting in and
[00:55:03] getting out and even for very small
[00:55:06] immediate jumps
[00:55:07] that happen on news boom
[00:55:08] it's sell sell sell and then buys buys
[00:55:10] buys or the opposite
[00:55:11] fake bad news
[00:55:12] it buys buys buys
[00:55:13] and then sell sell sell as
[00:55:14] the normal as the market normalizes.
[00:55:16] But you set your by side percentage
[00:55:18] if you want to override that 5%.
[00:55:20] So I can say I want to buy
[00:55:21] only when it goes down 15%
[00:55:23] and I want to make it automatic
[00:55:25] or manual.
[00:55:26] So I can either get text messages
[00:55:28] that say do you want to buy this?
[00:55:29] Based on your parameters,
[00:55:31] you should buy right
[00:55:31] now or you set it to automatically buy
[00:55:34] by clicking this checkbox and I'm just
[00:55:35] gonna automatically place
[00:55:37] the trades for you.
[00:55:38] And then the sell side can be
[00:55:39] different. So the sell side
[00:55:41] I want to sell when it's up 10%
[00:55:42] or I want to sell
[00:55:43] only when it's a home run
[00:55:44] and then it's up 25%. Hypothetically
[00:55:46] these things are happening with crypto and
[00:55:49] you know even with massive drops
[00:55:51] if you put your settings correctly,
[00:55:52] you're gonna be capturing waves
[00:55:54] even with the massive drops
[00:55:55] that we've been
[00:55:56] seeing recently.
[00:55:57] And then you can also make it
[00:55:59] to auto sell or to a manual sell.
[00:56:02] I went a step further.
[00:56:03] I'm not sure if anybody
[00:56:05] understands the finance side,
[00:56:06] but a trailing stop loss
[00:56:07] is something that crypto
[00:56:09] exchanges don't do.
[00:56:10] So I had to build my own
[00:56:12] trailing stop loss in Airtable. Which is
[00:56:15] why sell
[00:56:16] When the if you put your settings
[00:56:19] to 25% say it goes to 25%,
[00:56:21] why sell when it hits 25%?
[00:56:23] Why not now just start a ticker
[00:56:25] that says if you're
[00:56:26] trailing stop loss was say 2%
[00:56:30] you're letting it breathe
[00:56:31] so you're letting it go up
[00:56:33] And only when it pulls down 2%
[00:56:35] now so once it hits 25%
[00:56:37] it's entered this kind of
[00:56:38] like tracking thing only when it pulls
[00:56:40] back 2% does it actually do the sell and
[00:56:43] the same thing on the reverse
[00:56:44] when it's buying,
[00:56:45] why buy when it's 10% why not
[00:56:46] wait because it might keep going,
[00:56:48] it might go to 18%
[00:56:49] and then only pull back a
[00:56:50] little bit then
[00:56:51] and that's when you buy.
[00:56:52] So it's like a
[00:56:53] financial tool to not just buy at 10%,
[00:56:55] you let it breathe and it can go all the
[00:56:58] way down to 20 and then pulls back to 18%
[00:57:00] and that's when it buys
[00:57:02] so that's called a trailing stop loss.
[00:57:04] So I implemented that in here
[00:57:05] also
[00:57:06] and this is like where you
[00:57:08] saved the coin,
[00:57:09] I'm not gonna save this because
[00:57:10] this is
[00:57:11] a live system at this point
[00:57:13] but you can then go
[00:57:14] into any of your coins.
[00:57:16] So like for instance let's go into
[00:57:18] which is a very
[00:57:20] interesting coin.
[00:57:21] You can see Stackr allows me
[00:57:23] to embed stuff into Stackr so
[00:57:24] I've embedded the charts
[00:57:26] for each of these coins
[00:57:27] so it's easy for you to you
[00:57:28] know see things and
[00:57:30] do some analysis in here
[00:57:32] which is really nice.
[00:57:33] I can update this coin setting
[00:57:35] so I can say you know I want to change the
[00:57:37] budget to 12,000 and I want to
[00:57:39] change the settings basically.
[00:57:41] I want to make it not automatically
[00:57:43] buy anymore.
[00:57:43] I only want to be notified just
[00:57:44] by turning off this checkbox
[00:57:46] and that's all
[00:57:48] like as I said that's all being
[00:57:49] pushed over to Airtable.
[00:57:52] That's tracking all of this data.
[00:57:54] This is just the front end and Stackr.
[00:57:58] So as you can see for this
[00:58:00] this person has all these
[00:58:01] active positions.
[00:58:02] They have all of these closed positions,
[00:58:05] it tells you the annualized return for
[00:58:07] each of these closed positions.
[00:58:09] But it's a full fledged system now it's it
[00:58:12] has $1.4 million dollars
[00:58:14] invested. It has $284,000
[00:58:17] in closed profits to this point.
[00:58:21] I went a step further though and I said
[00:58:23] does the system actually make sense? Like
[00:58:26] can I build a back tester
[00:58:28] where
[00:58:30] if I said Bitcoin between March and August
[00:58:34] If I would have done say
[00:58:36] 10 positions 5% down,
[00:58:38] 10% up and a 1% trailing stop
[00:58:40] loss.
[00:58:41] How would that have performed
[00:58:44] versus just buying Bitcoin outright?
[00:58:46] And I hired a python developer
[00:58:49] to use basically the same
[00:58:51] system that I've
[00:58:52] already done like
[00:58:53] the algorithm that I've set up
[00:58:55] and he was able to build this
[00:58:57] back tester
[00:58:58] that outputs if you can think about it
[00:59:00] that's 90 to
[00:59:02] 100,000 lines of pricing data
[00:59:04] every single minute
[00:59:05] for the for like nine month
[00:59:07] period.
[00:59:07] And it goes through this data set
[00:59:10] and it calculates what the total
[00:59:12] return would have been.
[00:59:13] So this is the output of the chart
[00:59:14] of the closed profit
[00:59:16] and loss of the open P. N. L.
[00:59:18] And of the total return
[00:59:19] in terms of percentage.
[00:59:20] And in this example you'll see
[00:59:22] like this is where Bitcoin
[00:59:23] over a period of time
[00:59:25] was you know went down went up
[00:59:26] if you had bought on this day
[00:59:28] and right now
[00:59:29] we're at this day your overall
[00:59:31] return would be 9%
[00:59:32] whereas in ProfitGrab it would have
[00:59:34] been 48% because if you
[00:59:36] think about it it would have been
[00:59:37] buying, buying right selling up here
[00:59:39] Buying as it goes down
[00:59:41] selling selling, selling, buying, buying,
[00:59:42] buying it would reach a point
[00:59:44] when this becomes flat
[00:59:45] because you run out of
[00:59:45] budget right, you only had 10 positions.
[00:59:48] You bought those 10 positions now it's
[00:59:50] below that area.
[00:59:51] You're not making any money
[00:59:52] at this point so it becomes flat
[00:59:54] but then it comes back up
[00:59:56] and you start selling out
[00:59:57] of all those positions and
[00:59:58] you have this you know
[00:59:59] buy buy buy again, sell, sell sell.
[01:00:01] It's a really interesting strategy
[01:00:03] because you'll see that
[01:00:04] this curve right here
[01:00:05] is pretty predictable
[01:00:07] and I've done this test
[01:00:08] you know we're now involving
[01:00:10] machine learning
[01:00:12] and if I run up 20 Amazon aws
[01:00:16] processors and
[01:00:17] I said between this day and this day,
[01:00:20] this coin go and do as many
[01:00:22] configurations as you want
[01:00:24] and tell me what would have been
[01:00:25] the most optimal
[01:00:26] variable strategy.
[01:00:28] So but what we're finding is
[01:00:30] that this return is pretty
[01:00:32] predictable as long as you're
[01:00:33] in budget if you're out
[01:00:35] of budget becomes flat
[01:00:35] obviously.
[01:00:37] So it's been a really interesting system
[01:00:40] to set up. I have a finance
[01:00:41] background.
[01:00:42] My first job was in Merrill Lynch
[01:00:44] as a financial advisor.
[01:00:45] So I love this but
[01:00:47] I don't like my success being
[01:00:50] dependent on the markets
[01:00:51] and how random they are.
[01:00:53] So that's why I love Airtable
[01:00:55] is because it's not
[01:00:56] your building systems that
[01:00:57] work for the people
[01:00:58] you're building it for.
[01:00:59] And this was a really good example
[01:01:00] of building a system in Airtable
[01:01:02] that is basically an algorithm,
[01:01:04] an algorithm trading bot
[01:01:06] with Airtable as a
[01:01:07] back and
[01:01:08] there
[01:01:08] was a logic layer
[01:01:09] Stackr as the interface layer
[01:01:12] set and forget
[01:01:14] and it's been an amazing, amazing ride
[01:01:17] to this point. So that's ProfitGrab.
[01:01:22] I understood everything
[01:01:23] I'm sure Alli and Kamille
[01:01:25] did as well but that was
[01:01:27] awesome.
[01:01:28] Very cool stuff.
[01:01:29] Amazing what can be done in Airtable.
[01:01:33] And you've got real
[01:01:35] customers running a real business
[01:01:37] that's so cool. The
[01:01:40] Have that, do you foresee
[01:01:41] Airtable being the solution
[01:01:43] long term or that will it
[01:01:44] require?
[01:01:45] No. So I've done the calculations
[01:01:47] and I could probably only fit about
[01:01:49] 50 users in Airtable.
[01:01:51] I'm at right right now about 25 users.
[01:01:54] So I'm being very selective, right?
[01:01:57] I have minimums as to how
[01:02:00] how large of an account
[01:02:01] you need to be able to be
[01:02:02] in the system cause it's not
[01:02:02] worth it for some of the $5,000
[01:02:04] to take up one of those slots.
[01:02:06] Then you start getting into,
[01:02:08] you know, can I archive past data?
[01:02:09] I don't really want to get into that.
[01:02:11] So eventually we will be building it in
[01:02:13] raw code. But it's an amazing
[01:02:17] jumping point because I can export,
[01:02:19] you know, as you guys said,
[01:02:21] I think it's a sync dot I, I always
[01:02:23] think that I get it wrong,
[01:02:25] but you can export your schema
[01:02:26] to a sequel days,
[01:02:27] and give it on a silver platter
[01:02:29] to developers and say, here it is,
[01:02:31] here are all the automations,
[01:02:32] here's the schema of the system,
[01:02:34] like all you have to
[01:02:35] do is copy
[01:02:35] and you're cutting your development time
[01:02:37] like to a fraction of what it
[01:02:38] would have been
[01:02:39] just trying to tell the developer
[01:02:40] what they need to build.
[01:02:43] so we, we probably will get to that point.
[01:02:48] Yeah, but we need to
[01:02:49] to jump off of Airtable
[01:02:51] awesome, Thank you Charlie
[01:02:53] for sharing that
[01:02:54] and people can find you at profitgrab.com
[01:02:57] if they're interested
[01:02:58] and have deep pockets that want to put in
[01:03:00] crypto Exactly, exactly.
[01:03:03] That and I also besides
[01:03:06] crypto every morning I
[01:03:09] I work with a small team
[01:03:11] of mine so I called him a team
[01:03:13] but we're really,
[01:03:14] they're just like enthusiasts
[01:03:17] Airtable and shout out to them.
[01:03:20] It's really fun because they see me
[01:03:22] building and we talk about
[01:03:23] things that we're
[01:03:24] building at that moment
[01:03:25] and they're becoming really good
[01:03:27] and I'm able to give
[01:03:27] them tasks on projects
[01:03:29] that I'm working on.
[01:03:30] So if anybody's interested in that too,
[01:03:32] I do that every morning around eight
[01:03:34] a.m.
[01:03:35] It also keeps me in check.
[01:03:36] I do all of my work like in one hour,
[01:03:38] which is so great because then
[01:03:39] I have the rest of the day
[01:03:41] to just have client
[01:03:41] meetings and relax
[01:03:43] so how can they,
[01:03:44] what's the best way to get in contact with
[01:03:46] you?
[01:03:47] It's a great question.
[01:03:49] Probably my email.
[01:03:50] I don't know where I can write my
[01:03:52] email.
[01:03:54] You could put it in the slack group.
[01:03:58] That might be, yes,
[01:03:59] I'll do that, I'll do that,
[01:04:01] I'll put in the slack group
[01:04:02] but that's the best way.
[01:04:03] Cool, thank you Charlie
[01:04:05] and we appreciate you having on,
[01:04:07] we'll check in with you
[01:04:08] down the road
[01:04:09] and see where things are at
[01:04:10] with everything.
[01:04:11] Thank you.
[01:04:12] You have other amazing stuff
[01:04:14] to share with us. So we'll just stand
[01:04:16] Kamille is gonna share with us
[01:04:18] next week on on the segment she's got
[01:04:21] so we'll look forward to that.
[01:04:22] And just a quick plug for BuiltOnAir,
[01:04:24] join us in the BuiltOnAir community
[01:04:27] at builtonair.com
[01:04:29] and you'll find Charlie
[01:04:30] and Alli and Kamille and myself
[01:04:33] and thousands of other
[01:04:34] Airtable fans.
[01:04:35] And we'd love to have you join us.
[01:04:38] So thank you for this week
[01:04:39] for being with us.
[01:04:40] And we'd love to see what you
[01:04:42] build on air and join us next
[01:04:43] week. Take care everyone.