01—Small
Build the smallest useful thing.
Every project is tempted toward bloat. I push back. The first version should be almost embarrassingly modest — and genuinely used. Everything else earns its place afterwards.
Xzist Digital
How I work
One operator. On purpose.
I take on a handful of clients a year. That keeps quality high, overhead low, and the work personal. Here's what an engagement actually looks like, week by week.
Four steps. Each one earns the next.
I don't hand over a slide deck and disappear. Every phase has a real output you can see, use, and question.
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01
Conversation
An hour with your team on site or on a call. No slides, no deck. I listen for the phrases that tell me where the pain lives — 'and then we print it and re-key it', 'whoever's on the phone that day'. Those are the signals.
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02
Shaping
A week or two where I sketch the smallest thing that would move the needle. Usually one screen, one workflow, one piece of glue. You see concrete mockups, not wireframes, and we agree what's in and out before a line of code gets written.
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03
Building
Short cycles — a week, sometimes two. At the end of each one there's working software in your hands. You try it on a live job. I tune based on what you actually find, not what I guessed in the kitchen. This continues until the thing is genuinely good, not merely shipped.
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04
Living with it
Software drifts when it's ignored. I stay on as a light-touch partner — small monthly retainer, no long contract — adding the next tool as your business grows and retiring the bits you've outgrown. You always own the code.
Three rules I don't break.
These aren't slogans. They're the reason the work tends to last.
02—Owned
You own it. Not me, not a SaaS.
Code lives in your repo. Data lives in your database. Nothing holds your business hostage. If you decide to walk away from me tomorrow, you walk away with the tools.
03—Honest
If I can't help, I say so.
Some problems are already solved by Xero or a plugin. Some aren't worth solving with software yet. I'll tell you. A three-month project isn't worth starting if a free tool does the job.
Start a conversation
Ready to see how it works?
Send a short note. What's slow, what's broken, what's the dream. I'll come back with a point of view.