I have come across at least 3 people in the last month or so who have been interested in automation, usually after I have raved about how much efficiency it's going to drive 😜, and the response has been a variant on 'I don't know where to start and/or I don't have the time, can someone come in and show me how I can leverage these tools/just do it for me?"

are there active consultants in this space?  I feel like it's a massive opportunity right now.

bonus points - if you know anyone operating in Melb/australia/similar timezones, I have some work for them!!

hi team, having some issues with the hamburger menu bar on the mobile version of the site - it's super glitchy, hard to open, takes multiple attempts.

any ideas on how I can make the surface area bigger and easier to open?

you can check it on www.mobius.xyz

i have zapier (don't seem to be able to work) and have just created an integromat account but I'm a newbie to it!

I can use automation form airtable but that only uses twilio (also just created account) but that means that users would receive the final report from a different number (twilio versus clicksend) which isn't ideal.

i mean i *could* switch everything over to twilio but would rather avoid that hassle if possible....

yours in hope,
z

hey team, I'm trying to map out user flow through a website and would love to have a tool that I can use that easily shows the different pages, how they link together etc.

what's the best tool for this?  should i be looking at figma?  what else you got?

so it's been a month! I started this challenge with a single page pre-launch site and an idea that I could automate a back end somehow to solve a real world problem. so here we are. it's ugly. it's hacky. it's a little fragile but goddamn it, it works. a real life product, with users (note i said users, not paying customers😁) live in the wild.

What is it?

The first (of hopefully many) products from Mobius is the Guided Injection Patient Tracker - a fully automated platform to track pain levels in patients via SMS following guided injection therapy. Clinicians and Radiologists simply enter the patient name and mobile number and then the system will poll the patient on their pain levels at specific intervals corresponding to the relevant drug half life. Clinicians can then access a client portal to view reports of pain levels for individual patients over time, which incredibly useful clinical data.

What we have also discovered is that it also drives engagement between patient - radiologist and radiologist - referring GP. Winning!

Stack:

Airtable - database backend

Webflow - website

Zapier - stitching everything together

ClickSend - SMS platform

Stripe - payments, natch

Outseta - login, auth, billing, support, CRM

G Suite - email

Google Analytics - web tracking

Google Marketing Platform - bit early, but i'm ready!

The Journey

that base also became a form, which we could use to add dummy patient data

2.  A webflow template then allowed me to knock out a single page pre-launch site, complete with register your interest form (no-one did, but that's not overly surprising as we haven't pushed it anywhere yet). here's me working with the team to learn webflow. (Funnily enough I got into nocode because Brianne Kimmel, who is now one of the judges in T30, was tweeting about webflow).

installed google analytics and google marketing platform - i even ran a campaign and spent $30. i have no idea why.

hello to my friends from ecuador!

$30 not well spent....

3.  We then needed to use this dummy info in airtable to send SMS, so off to Clicksend we go. BIG SHOUTOUT to the clicksend support team who have been absolutely amazing, really top shelf, super responsive, super helpful.

so I figured out that I could send SMS - yay! but then how to automate it?

4.  Zapier to automate things.... so originally i used automate.io because the crew at ClickSend said that their support was better than Zapier. and it 100% was, incredibly responsive, available via chat, would jump on the tools and fix things in real time for me. but ultimately as i looked to grow out the stack it became clear that they lacked some of the integrations i needed 😩.

so zapier it was. and their support has been okkkaaaaay. but i needed to adjust to 24hr response times over email.

I needed to send an SMS on a specific date given in the airtable form which was triggered when a new record was added - then another (different) message in time stages of; 24 hrs, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, 28 days. This was a bit of nightmare tbh. but we got there after a lot of support back and forth.

and so a 14 step zap was born.

LESSON: if you use emojis in a message, it becomes a Unicode message which means you only get half the character count. emojis also count as 2 Unicode characters. so this means my original 7 SMS threads were actually counting (and being charged as) 49 SMS messages 😮 per patient. which ruined the entire unit economics of the business 🤬. so less emojis. rent a number from Clicksend so that we have a continuous conversation from the same number. re-write the script. and we are back in business!

and did i mention testing? yes lots of testing...

5. Patients reply, which is available in Clicksend - yay! so how do we get that from Clicksend into airtable? Zaps of course. Zap #2 is born.

how to match the response to the right patient in airtable? use zapier to search records using the phone number was the plan. BUT the phone number formatting of Airtable (USA) and from Clicksend (Australia) is different. which seems no biggie, but it meant that search did not match the records.

LESSON: phone number formatting is whack and it matters.  it matters because if you are looking to use this as the key identifier, you need to format it.  this was honestly the hardest thing I had to do in all of this - seriously!  it was so fiddly and stupid, it was incredibly frustrating.  eventually i solved via creating a second column (thanks to some Makerpad community inspo - h/t
Frazer McLeod  ) and using Zapier to format BOTH the numbers in the original base and from Clicksend.

6.  so matching the replies in airtable actually took me 3 zaps:

7.  so now i have the ability to collect patient info, send them messages, collate replies, match them to the correct records. this is starting to feel like a product! how could I share the data with clients though? airtable view link share to the rescue. by creating a view which was 1. grouped by phone number and 2. filtered by Radiologist I could then share a private, password protected link to a client which would only contain their patient data. amazing! (obviously only used for MVP purposes).

8.  so now we have enough product horsepower that we can start user testing - my co-founder is a radiologist, funnily enough, who just happens to do a lot of these operations (see https://mobius.xyz/#About-Mobius) and so using an emailed input form, we are off to the races. slowly, slowly, adding 2-3 users a day so i can monitor the back end. and it works! with some furious hamster wheel action in the background, but it works! and we are off to the races.

9.  back on the website and there are a few notifications about the contact us form being filled in. better do something with that. zapier to the rescue! automate sending a reply email via gmail and adding these contacts into another airtable base and we can market to them when we hard launch.

Tessa  spotted that I need multi-seat licences which set them apart from competitors like Memberstack. so away we go - as well as user registration/auth, they also do billing, customer support via chat, CRM and even some marketing i believe. but first up, let's build some more in webflow - now added pages and registration + login widgets which was actually pretty straight forward. props to
Geoff Roberts  from Outseta for a great onboarding call and pointing me in the right direction.

10.  so after clients register and login, then what happens? basically we wanted to provide 3 elements - 1. the ability to easily add patients to the platform, 2. see their results and 3. update their profile. this can be done relatively easily via Outseta so you can hide sections in webflow that will only become available once logged in.

For us this, the hidden content has 2 levels - anyone with an account (add patient form) and account specific (patient results , Profile page). FULL DISCLOSURE: i didn't manage to get this second element working yet, but have spoken to the legend that is Geoff at Outseta and he is going to help set it up. Initially it can be done manually by adding in the specific airtable view that has their data but ultimately this can also be automated by.. wait for it... zapier!

for the first element Airtable let's you embed the form directly in the site. boom.

the second element (patient data) can also be embedded into the hidden content section [note that I am just using the preview from airtable as I don't have dummy data i can use in the mobius site - it's all the real deal!

I now have a website that allows clients to read about what we do, get excited, they can choose a plan, pay us money (yay!) and get access to the product (GIPT).

Once they have registered, they can add patients who will then get polled by SMS on their pain levels following their procedure 6 times over the following month. they respond and this is all recorded and tabulated automagically.

meanwhile the client can log into their portal and see their own unique set of patients and their responses.

AH-FREAKIN-MAZING. I have been working in tech for 15 years and this no-code thing just continues to blow me away. I have always been front of house, so for someone like me to build this (with a shit ton of help from this makerpad community, support folks at multiple vendors, my goddamn legend of a wife) in 30 goddamn days is nothing short of an honest to god miracle.

next step - paying customers! that's the easy part, right?? real talk, it is easier for me than building - sales is my bread and butter.

I actually started down this path of building a side hustle inspired in no small part by
Tyler Tringas  who is one of the judges in the T30 - and started with webflow because another judge Brianne Kimmel tweeted about webflow - and here we are. small world eh??

here. we. go.

I hope you will come along for the ride.

just like in America - go and vote!

having completed the back end, am now focussed on finishing off the front end and specifically the ability for clients to find us + sign up and PAY US!

added in a menu bar in webflow, some pricing buttons, an about us page with founder bios - check it out at mobius.xyz and hit me with any feedback?

not all links are live yet 🤫 and you can't really sign up to give us money yet but it's getting closer!

caught some great content in the chats here tonight for things I needed including Termly for site T&Cs and Landbot if we decide to go down the chatbot route.

just a few days left, but keep calm and nocode on!

company registered 👊
stripe account setup 👊
outseta activated and linked to stripe 👊

now I just need to figure out this whole web-flow thingy and I'm sorted..... 😁

T minus 3 days and counting....

OK so not really like super fully operational, but the product functionality is ☑️ complete.  sure, the back end is still a bit hacky and the data we show to users is a bit ugly, but it works!  initial feedback has been super positive from users.

we have been adding 2-3 users a day and will keep that throttled while we build up a database of live activity.

to be an absolutely complete MVP i need to add in client sign up/authentication and payments, had a kick off call with outseta today so will get cracking on that with the plan to launch before the end of this t30.

let's goooooooooooo!

i am *this* close to becoming fully operational from a platform point of view for mobius.xyz

i just need to figure out how to automate the manual process of populating look up fields in airtable.

I know I can search and update a record using zapier, but can i use a zap to run lookup fields?

or can the new automate feature do that for me?  i saw they have sync feature, but not sure if that can be used.

any thoughts??  I am so close!

OK so I have now created a function to capture and store all of the contacts from the 'stay updated' form on the pre-launch site.  was pretty simple once I finally got around to it!  just a zap into an airtable.

plan is to use Outsetta as the CRM so will use this audience once I have done a soft launch.  Before I can do that I have to at least add in a few pages on the site, ideally the founders page (this is a big value add imo as my co-founder works in the field so provides instant cred) and the product about page.  Ideally this would contain a short video that I can pull together super fast.

anyone used a platform to create short run marketing videos?  I'm thinking stock video with overlay or perhaps animated.

final week already?? that shit cray.