What I Build

The five above overlap, and most people land somewhere between two of them. The quickest way to sort it out is to ask what the problem is costing you right now.

If the answer is work nobody should be doing, somebody retyping what a computer already knows, or copying the same numbers between two programs that both already have them, that is stop double entry. It is usually the cheapest of the five to fix and the fastest to notice once it is gone.

If the answer is a spreadsheet that has outgrown itself, with leads or jobs tracked in rows only one person really understands, that is replace a lead spreadsheet. The tell is that you have started losing track of things you used to keep straight without trying.

If the answer is calls you never got back to, that is missed call follow-up. The tell is simple. You already know roughly how many calls go unanswered in a week, and the number bothers you.

If the answer is the software itself, because you have tried the off-the-shelf options and every one of them wants you to run your business its way, that is custom business software. This is the largest of the five and the one that gets scoped individually rather than priced off a list.

If the answer is that people cannot find you, or what they find is out of date, that is a website. It is the most common first project, and the one people most often already have and are quietly unhappy with.

If two of those describe you, say both. They get built together more often than not, and doing them at once is usually cheaper than doing them in sequence.

Whatever ends up getting built, a few things do not change.

You own it. The site, the code, the domain, the data. It is not licensed to you and not rented. If you and I never speak again, everything keeps running and another developer can pick it up.

There is no monthly subscription. You pay for the work once. Hosting is free on the setups I use. The two care plans exist for people who would rather I handle changes than do it themselves, and they are optional.

You work with me directly. No account manager, no team to be handed off to. The person you talk to is the person building it, which is why things get fixed the same day instead of entering a queue.

Nothing gets built before it is scoped. You get the price before any work starts. Half to begin, half on delivery, and a project large enough that the number is uncomfortable gets split into stages instead.

You see it before you commit. For a website that means a free mockup, a real preview built from your actual business rather than a template with your name dropped in. For the bigger systems it means a conversation specific enough that you know what you are getting before you agree to it.