You're hiring one person. Here's what that actually means.

When an agency pitches you a website, you're usually talking to a senior person. Someone experienced, opinionated, who knows what they're talking about. After you sign, you get handed to someone else. That person hands pieces of it to other people. By the time the site ships, you might be talking to a project manager who's coordinating three developers, one of whom has been on the project for two weeks.

That's not a conspiracy. It's just how agencies work. The model requires it — you can't run a profitable firm at senior rates with senior developers doing everything. You layer in account managers, project managers, and junior developers who cost less. The math makes sense. The tradeoff is that the person who sold you the engagement isn't the person building your site.

I don't have any of that. It's one person. I take the call, write the scope, build the site, and respond when something breaks. The person you're talking to is the person doing the work.

What this looks like in practice

When a client needs something changed, they text me. Not a ticket system, not support@someagency.com, not a form that routes to a queue. A text. I see it, open the code, push a fix. Usually done in under an hour — not because I'm heroically available, but because I know the site. I built it. There are no handoff notes to parse, no ticket history to catch up on. I remember the decisions I made and why. When something breaks, I often know what's wrong before I open the file.

That responsiveness matters more for small sites than people realize. A photographer's portfolio is their storefront. If the gallery loads slowly the night before they're showing it to a potential client, they need someone who can fix it — not a ticket that gets resolved in 3–5 business days.

Why small sites are where I do my best work

I've built large things. I run a multi-location retail business on Shopify. I've built AI-powered automation, inventory sync pipelines, fraud detection systems, custom ERP integrations. I know what complex looks like at scale.

What I've figured out is that the complexity is often the interesting part of the problem, but not the valuable part for the client. A photographer doesn't need a complex site. They need a fast one, a beautiful one, one where it's immediately obvious what to do next. The work is hard in a different way — the constraint isn't technical, it's judgment. What do you cut? What actually matters? What does this business actually need from its website?

Those are questions I enjoy more than "how do we sync 40,000 SKUs in under 30 seconds." And I think clients can tell. The quality of attention you get from someone who genuinely wants to be working on your project is different from someone running through their third deployment of the week on autopilot.

I've been building on the web for 25 years. At this point I'm selective about what I take on — not to seem exclusive, but because the work I do best is the work I actually care about. Smaller sites, real businesses, clients who want to know the person they hired.

The honest tradeoffs

One person means I can't run ten projects simultaneously. I'm selective about what I take on because if I commit to your site, I'm actually doing it — which means I can't also be fully committed to five other things at the same time. If you're in a hurry and I have a full queue, you might wait.

I'm also not a one-stop shop for everything. If you need a TV spot, a 200-page print catalog, a brand identity built from scratch, and a website all in one vendor relationship, you want an agency with those departments. I build websites and web systems. That's the thing I do and do well.

And if you're a large company that needs multiple coordinated teams, a six-figure launch campaign, and a site with hundreds of pages — you want an agency. The overhead that feels like friction to a small business is often load-bearing infrastructure for a large one.

Who should actually reach out

The clients I work best with aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones with a real project and a real business behind it. A photographer who needs a portfolio that actually converts inquiries into bookings. A ranch owner who wants the site to look like the property actually looks — spectacular and specific. A consultant or local business that needs something that makes the right first impression on someone who just Googled them.

These aren't simple projects, but they're not complicated in ways that require a team. They require someone who pays close attention, has good judgment, and gives a damn about how it comes out. That's what I offer.

If that's what you're looking for, let's talk.