01 · Build the whole thing
Buffalo Collective, 2025 to present. My own company, so I can show you all of it.
I needed a website, an email system, a newsletter, payments, and a community platform, with no budget and no team, so I decided to try my hand at vibecoding.
The site is Claude-written HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, deployed from GitHub to Netlify, with serverless functions routing every form into Brevo and Fathom for analytics. The site is registered at Namecheap and has SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records so the email sends are trusted. Beyond the site design, I built the newsletter template system from scratch: type, palette, modular components, and a color convention that signals what kind of send you are getting before you read a word, then built the automations and workflows in Brevo.
When all that was done, I found the entire effort so rewarding and effective that I wanted to pass it forward. I thought it was especially important to highlight the preparation and spec work that is needed to create a finished website that is stable and robust enough to accept significant edits and updates. I turned the method into an online course that teaches non-technical people to do the same thing with Claude.
Website: buffalocollective.co (opens in new tab)
Course content: Request access here (opens in new tab)
I built a durable and high quality marketing platform for a bootstrapped new business.
02 · Set them up for success
One example of many: An AI agent is only as good as the standard behind it, and almost nobody has written theirs down.
A nonprofit entrepreneurship ecosystem organization. 2022, and again in 2025.
They had a rotating cast of people running social media. Every handoff meant a new interpretation of scope and tone, so the brand drifted.
With Claude, I provided the standard that stopped it. Starting with dozens of hours of transcripts from the founder’s podcast, I created a voice guide that turned the founder’s natural speech into four named pillars. These were mapped to context, with four audience segments and explicit rules for what to avoid with each, and substitution pairs, so it is usable rather than aspirational: instead of “utilize,” try “use.”
Then we designed the workflow that runs on top of it: A documented process from objectives to scheduled posts, with an AI prompt built into the procedure for generating a 90 day calendar, including what to do when the model returns an incomplete answer. Approval is split in two: the communications team signs off on execution, the executive director reviews concepts only, and the document says in writing what she does not review.
I created a social media system that allows any team member to execute for consistency and connection, and I reduced the founder’s administrative task list at the same time.
03 · Fix the plumbing
A regional garden design and education business. 2026.
The client needed a full newsletter overhaul. They wanted off MailChimp, because it was expensive, and it did not fit their values, but they also needed a new strategy for making the most of a list that had gotten very inconsistent attention over the past year.
I started with an audit of their existing database and tag structure, then constructed the new field and tagging strategy in tandem with the new messaging strategy. A migration is a rare chance to fix what is underneath, so I rebuilt the data model on the way through: first touch preserved, most recent offer overwritten, data we needed pushed forward, and what we didn’t was shed along the way.
Aside from the MailChimp to Brevo transition, this new build required configuration of Make scenarios to accurately pass customer information from Kajabi to Brevo, so I built the integration on per-form webhooks and wired the whole path with error handling: course platform to automation layer to email to payments. I set up authentication and monitoring on the domain.
I built what they asked for, and upgraded the strategy and infrastructure while I was there.
