Things I learned
the hard way.
Notes from 20 years in business, one production SaaS, and a lot of conversations about AI that started with the wrong question.
You don’t need an AI strategy. You need to know which problem you have.
Most AI projects fail before anyone opens a code editor. Not because of the technology. Because nobody asked the right question first.
A founder once told me he needed a chatbot. I almost started building one. Then I asked what problem he was actually trying to solve. Thirty minutes later we had a completely different project — smaller scope, clearer outcome, faster to build, higher return. The chatbot conversation was the most expensive thing that didn’t happen.
I’ve seen this pattern enough times that I now spend more time on the first conversation than any other part of an engagement. It is not glamorous. There is no GitHub commit for it. But it is the most valuable hour.
All articles
An honest breakdown from someone who builds these systems: what agencies really sell, what it costs, the red flags, and the cases where you should skip the agency entirely.
What a Claude consultant actually does, what it costs, the seven questions that separate practitioners from slide-deck sellers — and when you don’t need one at all.
The ROI formula is the easy part. What changed: AI collapsed build costs and made measurement programmatic. How to run the real numbers on your site.
Launch your startup MVP in days, not months. Step-by-step with real examples from someone who actually did it.
The classic playbook still works — but AI collapsed the cost of running it well. What I actually operate on my own sites, feature by feature.
In November 2025 I asked "what is a terminal?" Two months later I had a production SaaS. What vibe coding actually is, what it requires, and what it produced.
From $500 to $50,000+ — what actually drives the difference and how to get real value for your budget.
No theory — I run SEO for my own two businesses with real data. The keyword research, indexing lessons, and AEO tactics that actually moved the needle.
Not sure which type of problem you have?
That’s the most common answer. And the most honest one. Let’s figure it out together.