I’m Not a Web Designer. So Why Am I Building Websites in an Hour?
I never set out to become a web designer. But people started asking me to build websites, and I realized that AI has completely changed the economics of the work. Tasks that once took a week, or sometimes much longer, can now sometimes be completed in an hour, or even minutes. The important shift is that the hard part is no longer just technical execution. The first question should be: What does this website actually need to accomplish? Does it need to establish credibility? Generate an inquiry? Take a payment? Collect a submission? Support an existing customer? Once that outcome is clear, AI can dramatically accelerate the structure, wording, forms, logic, mobile design, and even much of the work behind the scenes, including deployment, DNS, integrations, and APIs. But speed is not enough. AI can build something impressive that still fails to solve the business problem. The real skill is combining judgment, clear instructions, technical understanding, and AI to get from: “We need this.” to: “Here. It works.” The bigger lesson goes far beyond websites: What can you already do that becomes dramatically more valuable when AI removes the slow part?
Episode notes
I never set out to become a web designer. But people started asking me to build websites, and I realized that AI has completely changed the economics of the work. Tasks that once took a week, or sometimes much longer, can now sometimes be completed in an hour, or even minutes. The important shift is that the hard part is no longer just technical execution. The first question should be: What does this website actually need to accomplish? Does it need to establish credibility? Generate an inquiry? Take a payment? Collect a submission? Support an existing customer? Once that outcome is clear, AI can dramatically accelerate the structure, wording, forms, logic, mobile design, and even much of the work behind the scenes, including deployment, DNS, integrations, and APIs. But speed is not enough. AI can build something impressive that still fails to solve the business problem. The real skill is combining judgment, clear instructions, technical understanding, and AI to get from: “We need this.” to: “Here. It works.” The bigger lesson goes far beyond websites: What can you already do that becomes dramatically more valuable when AI removes the slow part?