Personal

What did you do today?

How did you feel about today?

What did you accomplish?

What did you learn today?

Did you meet anyone new?

Family

What did you do today?

Evening Check-In

Meetings Recap

I wasn't able to meet with Andy today because of the Primo meeting. I ended up spending some time today with Claude Ball, the human, trying to figure out how we move forward with Lumberock. Basically, I sent him the company story of Lumberock before the week and was hoping that he could do some extra homepage design.

He ran into this challenge where I didn't give him enough information about the story, and because I already designed out basically the entire block library, he felt like a lot of his effort there wasn't necessary, which I totally get. I spent the morning trying to figure out, with this new style guide structure that I have in place, how we involve a designer to get new and unique things, but also not be able to spend as much time in that design phase, especially for smaller projects. Now Lumberock does have a budget, so we can spend a little bit more time there, but he brought a point of if we had these 15 different building blocks already, what is the point? I think I need to figure out how we involve a designer at the appropriate time, to where his work doesn't feel like it's unnecessary and a side product of what's most important. At the end of the day, I don't want all of my websites to look the same. I want them to be unique. I want, when you go to them, to be like, "Oh, that's cool, that was custom." I don't really know what the answer is there.

On a different note, I met with Rebecca from TexBuilt, and the crazy thing about this was that this was really the first time I met her. I did one phone call with her while I was sick a couple of weeks ago for about 30 minutes, and then the rest of our communication has been through email and a couple of Loom videos.

What's wild about this meeting in particular, given the short turnaround time, is that I basically took the style guide and just reformatted it into their brand aesthetic, changed the fonts, changed the colors, changed the styles of the blocks, the whole nine yards, and then went ahead and actually built out the wireframes of the seven or eight different pages that she had. This was the first meeting; I have not met her before. We did not do a design round; we did not do wireframes; we did not talk about messaging, none of that. She basically saw a 60 to 65% website during meeting number one.

Obviously, that was a humongous risk to take, but it went flawlessly. I focused her in on over a 45-minute session on deciding whether or not she had the building blocks on each page to be able to then write content too, and the answer across the board was yes. Now she's going to spend the next two weeks writing content, finding imagery, the whole nine yards, and in two weeks' time we'll be able to go ahead and move all of her content in. It should basically be done. There's actually a chance that we're ahead of schedule, which is absolutely wild to think about.

Now I just need to get Sophie over at Studio Hawk engaged, because she needs to do some SEO work for them, but at the moment this project is going swimmingly.

Deliverables

Consume Media has been working on their website now for about 48 business hours. Michael over there noticed that one of our custom blocks was missing a couple of features. I'm very thankful because I was able to very easily add that in about 10 minutes. Because of AI efficiencies and whatnot, we are able to actually deliver a lot more feature-packed products than ever before. We are also able to do these small, tiny changes in about 10 minutes and actually have it be worthwhile and not be considered out of scope.

Chris Dubois is actively writing content for me and then wrote up my first LinkedIn newsletter article that I looked at last night. I know that he needed some graphics for it, so I went ahead and designed a video game-style banner image for this, where all I really need to do is change the title. I'm using all of the Kenny design elements, and it's easy when you have a design pack of assets to design something that's kind of cool.

I found a new font on Envato that I liked for the sign. I'm thinking that when I go out of town this weekend, the idea of going ahead and launching the slightly revamped version of the Classic City site with some new fonts and stuff like that, with the new video game aesthetic, is going to be top on the list.

New Clients / Prospects

Brian jungles actually sent somebody over. Brian is a person that I met at Content Day. The person that he sent over, his name is JJ and runs a concrete prep business, I believe. I think he basically owns the franchise within Georgia, if I recall correctly. This dude's website got lost; the website vendor that he was working with before took it down. I did find out that it was a WordPress website. Went back to the wayback machine and figured that part out, so if he can get it live, it wouldn't be that much of a problem. I know the dude has about $5,000 to spend. I don't know if I can help him for $5,000, but I do like the idea of helping out Brian from Jungles. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want to do there.

Did a $5,000 bill for Lorraine with that pool defense US website managing on my own, which is fine, but I also know that that might not be the best use of my time. Now that I've actually hit the $400,000 minimum revenue for the year, which I'm super stoked about, I'm debating if I want to take on another project like that or pass it over to somebody. The thing is, I don't know who I pass it over to you.

Reflections

What worked today worth repeating: The meeting with TexBuilt about the style guide was fantastic. I'm really stoked about that. She has a few other website projects as well, which also makes me excited. She's a part of a family of companies, and TexBuilt is just one of many. Right now, all of their other websites are hosted on a really crappy platform with a really large maintenance budget. They need to actually decrease that, because it's not worth them paying a $1,500 a month maintenance-only bill when it's basically just covering hosting.

I'm going to get them set up on WP Engine, which is already moving. My communication style with Rebecca has been on point, so I basically just need to make sure that I'm staying on top of that and delivering well and on time. They spent $17,000 on this one website build. If we can do $15,000 for the other three websites that they have, that would be absolutely huge for my year. I'm really thankful that I built out that style guide.

What surprised you: This shouldn't really have been a surprise, but the whole conversation with Claude Ball around the homepage design for Lumberock. I get why he had an issue with trying to design random other blocks this weekend. We didn't have a good story for the homepage; we had a lot of stuff already designed. I get how he hit a wall, but it still was surprising.

I know right now, with my stuff with this style guide implementation that I have, I know that Claude is basically thinking behind the scenes, "Is there a need for his role at Classic City anymore?" The answer is yes. I just happened to close a handful of sites that have stuff already at their disposal, which is really odd and strange. That's just not normal. Lumberock is not normal with its solid aesthetic going into it. TexBuilt is not normal, because they needed a website live and design didn't matter. The Aeon Laser site needed a quick migration, like the design didn't really matter, and it was bad before and will be ten times better now with what we have. I have these quick turn projects where design was not the most important thing, and I don't know if that's indicative of where things are going or purely happenstance.

Bonus — getting back into reading: I ended up joining Mickey Mellen's book club with him and a few other people, and we are reading A Gentleman in Moscow. Over the weekend, I was at like 60%, and between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I absolutely crushed the last 40% of that book. I have not read on a consistent basis in a very long time, and I am extraordinarily excited that I have a reason to actually read again.

Book club is actually on Tuesday, and we're going to get together at a coffee shop and talk about it over in Dunwoody. We've already picked out our next book, which is going to be Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I went ahead and actually grabbed that book today and started reading it tonight. Looks like I might be getting back into the swing of actually reading again, which I'm very excited about.

What's bugging you / spark worth chasing: I'm really trying to figure out how to do project management inside the confines of a single project. I'm really glad that Dawn is working on Primo and Consume Media. It's definitely helped keep my head screwed on straight, but for things like TexBuilt, it hasn't necessarily seemed as necessary.

I'm wondering what I can do with AI and inside this chief of stuff that would actually help me stay on track with various projects. What things I need to be doing on a regular basis to make sure that everything like that stays up to date?

Open Loops

idts

Podcast Queue

• What's the role of design when the block library is already done? Claude Ball pushed back on Lumberock — "if we had these 15 different building blocks already, what is the point?" Three back-to-back projects (Lumberock, TexBuilt, Aeon Laser) didn't need much design phase. Real question for agencies: how do you involve a designer at the right time so their work doesn't feel like a side product, while still keeping every site looking custom? "I don't want all of my websites to look the same."
• The 60% website at meeting #1: First-ever real meeting with Rebecca at TexBuilt. No design round, no wireframe round, no messaging round — Chris reskinned the style guide into their brand and built out 7-8 page wireframes ahead of meeting one. "She basically saw a 60 to 65% website during meeting number one. Obviously, that was a humongous risk to take, but it went flawlessly." Could be ahead of schedule. The new playbook when style guides + AI compress the discovery-to-build loop.
• AI economics killed "out of scope": Michael at Consume Media flagged a missing feature on a custom block. Chris added it in 10 minutes. "We are also able to do these small, tiny changes in about 10 minutes and actually have it be worthwhile and not be considered out of scope." Scope policing was a function of cost. When the cost collapses, so does the policy.