Hey 👋

This newsletter is for independent creators, expression-minded solopreneurs, and makers who want to build meaningful work without losing heart in the process.

Happy Easter 🐣

Learning why my brain works the way it does, running my ads, and playing a DJ set on a Saigon rooftop. Let's go ;]

🧠 Reflection of the week

Four months on one project. A website for a real estate agency that should've taken eight weeks.

Not because the work was hard. Because the process was broken.

Here's what I learned, and if you do client work in any form, this might save you months of pain.

The project started loose. No moodboard. No forced reference selection. No clear "this is the direction, yes or no?" moment before building. Every revision became a guessing game because we never locked the foundation.

Second mistake: too many emails, not enough calls. Every misunderstanding over email would've been solved in a 10-minute conversation. But I kept typing instead of calling online.

Third: I showed the full design too late. One big reveal after weeks of heads-down work. The feedback hit hard because I was already emotionally invested. Short check-ins along the way would've caught problems early, when they're cheap to fix.

The real lesson underneath all of this? Being flexible doesn't make you a good freelancer. Being structured does. Flexibility without boundaries is just people-pleasing dressed up as professionalism.

If you're starting a new client project soon, do this: force the client to choose references before you touch a project. Schedule weekly 15-minute calls. Show rough progress after day three, not day thirty.

Future you will be grateful.

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💡 Inspiration of the week

I watched a video about ADHD this week and stumbled onto a concept that reframed how I think about productivity.

Five fuels. Not habits. Not routines. Fuels.

Fascination. Novelty. Challenge. People. Honor.

The idea is simple: people with ADHD (and honestly, most creative people) don't run on discipline. They run on of these five fuels is available at any given moment.

I tested this against my own week. Monday I finished a draining project and the relief turned into raw energy. Tuesday I was building new things at full speed. By Saturday... couch, headache, zero motivation, guilt about not working.

Same person. Totally different fuel levels.

Here's the insight that stuck: "honor" as a fuel is basically guilt in a suit. It works, but it burns dirty. The clean fuels are fascination and challenge.

So instead of asking "what should I do today?",

try "what's actually fueling me right now?"

If the answer is nothing, stop forcing it. The tank is empty. Rest isn't laziness, it's maintenance.

If the answer is fascination or challenge, ride it hard. That's when the best work happens.

This one shift stopped me from spiraling on a low-energy Saturday. Maybe it can do the same for you.

🔧 Tool of the week

​Stitch.

It's a design-to-code tool that generates full page layouts from a text prompt. Think Figma meets AI, but the output is actual production-ready code.

I've been pairing it with Claude Code (by MCP) and the workflow changed everything about how I build websites.

Describe a page in Stitch. Get a visual layout. Feed it into Claude Code. Get real Next.js components out the other end.

What used to be a full day of bouncing between Figma mockups and code now collapses into one focused session.

It doesn't replace knowing what good design looks like. You still make the decisions. But it kills the blank canvas problem, that moment where you're staring at an empty file wondering where to start.

If you build websites, for yourself or for clients, and you haven't tried an AI design-to-code workflow yet, Stitch is a solid place to start. The speed difference is hard to believe until you try it.

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📈 Business development

Closed the long agency project. Sent the invoice. New client starting mid-April.

Launched my digital product this week. A course about building websites with AI. First sale came in.

Someone building a beauty course who needs help with the whole funnel, from landing page to payment integration.

The pattern I'm noticing, and this might resonate if you're in a similar spot: the shift from "I trade time for money" to "I build things that sell while I sleep" doesn't happen overnight. It happens in parallel. You keep doing client work, but you carve out space for products and systems on the side.

One sale won't replace an agency income. But one sale proves the model works. And that proof changes how you think about everything else.

🎧 DJ / Creator Journey 🌏

Friday night. Le Café des Stagiaires in Ho Chi Minh City.

When I played a set and something clicked. The kind of night where you stop overthinking which track comes next and just feel what the room needs.

It's very good organic tribal house DJ set. Check here.​

Got paid for playing music. First 1 million earned from playing (VND not USD or PLN, but still! 😅).

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Also, yesterday the second episode of Solo z Maszyną dropped. It's a podcast I'm building with a friend about AI, automation, and building things as independent creators.

Two creative outcomes for me this week.

Music and conversation.

Both running on the same fuel: people and fascination.

💬 Any thoughts or reflections? Text me back!

Thanks for being here.

Have a good week and see yaa next Sunday ✌️

Bart