A designer building an app — with a little help from AI
Quick confession: I'm not a developer. I'm a designer with over ten years experience running my own creative agency. But I've spent a lot of that time building systems — for my clients, for my team, and eventually for the coaching methodology that Profit for Creatives is built on.
When I decided to turn that methodology into an app, I knew I needed to plan properly before trying to build anything. So I started using Claude (Anthropic's AI) as a strategic planning partner — mapping out the product, stress-testing the business model, thinking through pricing, growth, all of it. That turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made. Having a plan before building saved me from the expensive mistake of building things, pulling them apart, and starting again. (Well, mostly — more on that in a second.)
For the actual app build, I'm using Lovable — an AI-powered development tool. I'm not writing code. I'm designing, instructing, and directing. Think of it as an extension of my existing skill set: UI experience, web knowledge, and a very clear picture of what the end product needs to feel like.
That said — AI doesn't solve everything. I've got a close friend who's a seriously experienced developer, and there have been plenty of moments where I've needed to bounce things off a real human. Sanity-checking architecture decisions, debugging something that made no sense, or just asking "is this the right way to do this?" Having that human sounding board alongside the AI tools has been essential. Don't let anyone tell you it's all robots from here.
Biggest win so far
Seeing the Run-My-Business dashboard come to life for the first time — watching real numbers flow through the system, the allocations working, the math actually mapping. Did a full happy dance. 💃
Biggest lesson learned
I built an entire feature the wrong way. It kept bugging out, I kept patching it, and eventually I had to accept that the fastest path forward was to scrap it and start fresh with a better prompt. Painful — but it taught me that how you instruct the AI matters just as much as what you're building. Vague brief without context in, messy product out. Sound familiar, fellow creatives? 😏
What we're reading
The SaaS Playbook — Rob Walling
Deep into the pricing chapters now. Walling says most founders underprice by 2-5x. I find that fascinating because it's exactly what I coach my creative clients on — most freelancers undercharge too. Turns out it doesn't matter what industry you're in, undervaluing your work is universal.
Check it out →
What we're listening to
The Futur with Chris Do — "What Makes Something Valuable?" with Ron Baker (Ep. 138)
An oldie but a goodie — I come back to this one regularly. Ron Baker's core argument is simple: understand what is truly valuable to your customer, and make sure you deliver exactly that. When you nail that, pricing takes care of itself. It's something I coach my clients on all the time, and it's shaping how we think about every feature we build.
Check it out →