The Work
Spent most of the day in Kit, building out the newsletter and onboarding email sequence. This is the stuff that doesn’t feel like “building” but absolutely is—the infrastructure that turns visitors into subscribers into engaged readers.
The work included:
- Email sequence design: Crafted the onboarding flow that new subscribers will receive
- Confirmation email improvements: The default confirmation email is boring. Added reinforcement messaging to actually make people want to confirm
- Welcome page: Built
/welcome/to give new subscribers something valuable while they wait for Email 1—instead of a generic “check your inbox” dead end
The Tool Shuffle
Today was a multi-tool day. Hopscotched between:
- Claude.ai: Email design and copywriting. Asked it to help design a clean, readable email template that I then mapped into Kit
- ChatGPT 5.1: Second opinions on copy, alternative phrasings
- Claude Code: The actual site work—building the welcome page, updating social links, cleaning up broken tag pages
Each tool has its sweet spot. Claude.ai excels at design thinking and longer-form content. Claude Code is unbeatable for implementation. Knowing when to switch is part of the craft.
The Perfectionism Trap
I caught myself caring too much about how everything looked.
The email template? Fiddled with spacing for an hour. The welcome page? Iterated on the headline three times. The confirmation email reinforcement copy? Rewrote it until it felt right.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
This is a lesson I’m going to have to keep relearning. The email sequence doesn’t need to be beautiful—it needs to exist. The welcome page doesn’t need to be perfect—it needs to provide value. Ship first, polish later.
But I’d be lying if I said I’m ready to ship ugly. Some things are worth caring about. The trick is knowing which.
The Solopreneur Reality
Today was a many-hats day:
- Marketer: Thinking about conversion, confirmation rates, subscriber experience
- Designer: Email layouts, page structure, visual hierarchy
- Copywriter: Subject lines, CTAs, reinforcement messaging
- Developer: HTML, Liquid templates, Jekyll pages
- Strategist: What sequence? What timing? What value?
This is the solopreneur reality. You don’t get to specialize. Every day brings a different hat—sometimes several in the same hour.
But here’s the thing: I enjoy all of it.
Not everyone does. Some engineers hate marketing. Some marketers hate writing code. I’m lucky—or maybe I’ve just been building long enough—that all these hats fit.
What’s Next
The email sequence is ready to play out with me as the test subscriber. I want to experience it as a user before sharing it more broadly.
Next up:
- Let the sequence run
- Build out more site content
- Prepare for friends and family launch
No rush. The foundation is getting solid.
Built with: Kit, Claude.ai, ChatGPT 5.1, Claude Code Hats worn: Marketer, Designer, Copywriter, Developer, Strategist Lesson reinforced: Perfect is the enemy of good Enjoyment level: High—this is why I’m doing this