I make useful things for the internet.

18 Innovations makes specialized race-car components using steel fabrication, 3D printing, and other manufacturing methods.

When Aaron came to me, the business was running on Shopify. It worked, but the setup had become expensive, cumbersome, and limiting for what the business actually needed.

He originally asked if I could help him fix the site.

I moved 18 Innovations to a less expensive hosting setup that gave the business more storage, better performance, and significantly more freedom to build around the way the shop actually works.

The goal wasn't simply to replace Shopify with another website.

It was to give Aaron the tools he needed to operate the business without fighting the technology behind it.

Alongside the storefront, I built internal tools for tracking orders, manufactured parts, and shop work logs.

That relationship has grown into an ongoing collaboration.

Aaron understands race cars. I understand how to turn ideas and processes into software.

Together, we're developing and exploring tools around race-car management, suspension geometry, diagnostics, and other specialized problems that aren't well served by existing software.

One of those collaborations began because the tools already available for four-link suspension setup were old, difficult to use, and didn't work the way Aaron envisioned.

Instead of accepting that limitation, we started building something better.

Customers have said the new site is easier to use, and Aaron has said the website, work log, and part-tracking tools have worked beautifully for the business.

More importantly, the system belongs in Aaron's hands.

I don't want clients to depend on me to change every button, product, or piece of content.

Whenever possible, I give them the tools and access they need to operate what I've built themselves.

I'm still there when Aaron needs something, and we're constantly collaborating on what comes next.

The part I'm most proud of isn't simply replacing one ecommerce platform with another.

It's using what I know to empower Aaron and 18 Innovations to spend more time doing what they're good at.

Technicolor Screen Printing came to me through Aaron at 18 Innovations.

He trusted the work I'd done for his business enough to tell his friends that they should talk to me.

That's about the best referral I can ask for.

TSP was frustrated with the site they were running through GoDaddy.

It was slow, unreliable, and had a habit of going down at exactly the wrong time: when customers were trying to use it.

But reliability wasn't the only problem.

TSP creates temporary online storefronts for local businesses, teams, organizations, and brands.

A store may need to exist for a particular ordering window, then disappear when that window closes.

Their existing platform wasn't built around that workflow.

When I sat down with Halley, I didn't start by asking what we could make the existing platform do.

She told me what the shop actually needed.

Then I built toward that.

First, I moved TSP onto independent hosting so the business had control over its own storefront.

Then I built a custom WordPress theme around the way Technicolor Screen Printing actually operates and paired it with WooCommerce.

But the most important piece didn't exist.

I developed a custom expiring-storefront plugin that allows TSP to create temporary shops and automatically close them when their ordering period ends.

Instead of changing the business to accommodate the software, the software now accommodates the business.

TSP now has a storefront it controls, hosted on infrastructure it controls, with functionality built specifically around the way the shop sells.

The temporary-store workflow that wasn't available in their old platform is now part of the system itself.

And the new setup has been working reliably for the business.

That's generally how I prefer to work.

The platform should adapt to the business, not the other way around.

When I took over the operation, the detail department was tracking production with pen and paper.

The paperwork was about a month behind.

As the manager, I needed to know what my crew was producing, which vehicles were moving through the department, how individual employees were performing, and where work was getting stuck.

By the time the paper records could answer those questions, the answers were already weeks old.

So I built the system I wished I'd inherited.

The first tool became a web-based reconditioning and production system.

Vehicles currently moving through recon are populated from VAuto, so the department can work from existing vehicle information instead of manually entering the same inventory into another system.

The crew logs the work performed on each vehicle and the detailers responsible for it.

Each kind of work has a predetermined credited labor value.

A full recon, for example, may be worth five labor hours. If a detailer finishes that job in one actual hour, they still receive the five credited hours associated with the work.

Those hours are used to measure productivity and determine performance bonuses.

If multiple detailers work on the same vehicle, the system can distribute the production credit between them.

Instead of reconstructing production from handwritten sheets weeks later, the numbers are calculated as the work happens.

Once the work became structured data, the application could do much more than replace a clipboard.

It became a live view of the department.

• Daily, weekly, and monthly credited labor
• Completed reconditions
• Work broken down by type
• Active team members
• Daily production averages
• Individual employee production
• Vehicles currently in reconditioning
• Assigned detailers and vehicle age

The accessories department had a related problem: technicians needed a fast way to record the work they were producing without turning labor tracking into another job of its own.

So I built a technician labor system around the way they actually work.

A technician selects themselves, identifies the vehicle or stock number, and chooses the accessory or task performed from a predefined list.

Common work is already there waiting for them, and technicians can quick-add new accessories themselves as the department changes.

They can record multiple tasks in a single session, add notes, and see their total credited labor.

Those individual entries automatically become a live labor report.

Logging accessory work can also update a separate status system for new vehicles.

Every incoming vehicle has work that needs to happen before it's ready for the lot: accessories, tint, PDI, washing, fuel, service work, body-shop work, and other preparation.

While logging labor, a technician can also move that vehicle to the appropriate operational status.

Finishing a job doesn't require completing the work, recording the labor, and then opening another system just to tell everybody what happened.

One action can update both the employee's production record and the vehicle's operational status.

Nobody hired me as an outside developer to interview the department and guess what its workflow should look like.

I knew what information the manager needed because I was the manager.

I knew what would frustrate the technicians because they were my crew.

And I knew which problems were actually worth solving because I dealt with them every day.

The software came directly out of doing the work.

I eventually left the company.

The operation still uses the tools I built, and I continue to provide support when it's needed.

For me, that's a pretty good test of whether internal software is actually useful:

The person who built it can leave, and the people doing the work still choose to use it.

Bryson was starting Falls Finish Works and, like a lot of new business owners, began with Wix.

A friend showed me the site he'd put together and my first thought was that the business was carrying way more website machinery than it needed.

Falls Finish Works needed a professional place to show the work, explain the business, and give potential customers a way to get in touch.

That's fundamentally a static website.

There was no reason for Bryson to keep paying every month for a heavy website platform just to serve a handful of pages that barely change.

I approached the project the same way I approach most Useful Internet Co. jobs.

I didn't ask what we could make Wix look like.

Bryson sent me images and references showing the look he had in mind.

Then I made them real.

I rebuilt Falls Finish Works as a custom static site.

No unnecessary CMS.

No ecommerce system.

No oversized application framework sitting behind a few pages of content.

Just the HTML, CSS, and functionality the site actually needs.

That makes the site simple to host, quick to load, easy to maintain, and extremely inexpensive to keep online.

Falls Finish Works now has a professional web presence without an ongoing website platform bill attached to it.

The business isn't paying every month for features it doesn't use.

And the site looks like the thing Bryson actually asked for, rather than the closest approximation available inside a site builder.

I've been building websites since I was a kid, so sometimes the useful part of the job isn't figuring out how to add more technology.

It's recognizing when the technology is unnecessary.

If a business needs ecommerce, a database, custom software, or a CMS, I'll build around that.

But if all it needs is a fast, good-looking site that tells people what the business does, I don't see any reason to make it more complicated.