Day 38: When 10 Weeks Becomes 3.5 Hours: The $16,000 Reality Check

I spent this morning building landing pages and updating website content — the kind of foundation work that matters when you're preparing to put yourself out there. Nothing glamorous, but it got me reflecting on just how much has changed since I started this journey.

The $16,000 Website Story

Back in February 2023, fresh out of my previous business, I did what any sensible entrepreneur would do: invested in a proper website. I wasn't messing around — $8,000 for professional copywriting across all pages, plus some well-written blog articles to establish credibility. The team did brilliant work, and I was heavily involved throughout. Worth every dollar.

Then came the development: another $8,000. The outcome was solid, but the experience? Not so much. Endless back-and-forth, what felt like an overseas development team, and way more time than anyone wanted to invest. Add a Linktree subscription for link management, and we're talking a 10-week journey from start to finish.

Pretty standard experience, I reckon. Expensive side of standard, but still typical for anyone wanting quality work.

This Morning's Reality Check

Fast-forward to today. Same quality standards, same attention to detail, but I'm working in the automation space now — using these new tools to help business owners get better outcomes faster.

I started at 7 AM with a coffee and a clear list. First, I mapped out the user journey for two new landing pages — one for my automation consulting work, another for the productised service I'm developing. Then I wrote the copy, structured the pages, and had them live within 90 minutes.

Next came updating my main website copy to better reflect what I actually do now versus six months ago. Found three broken internal links and fixed those too. Finally, I built a proper links page to replace that Linktree subscription — complete with tracking and analytics.

This morning's work included:

• Two new landing pages
• Updated website copy
• Fixed three existing pages
• Created an independent links page
• All the messaging and brand consistency I needed

Total time: 3.5 hours.

I'm sitting here wondering if you can feel the shift I'm feeling. This isn't just about me getting better at websites — though experience certainly helps. It's about what's become possible when you combine human expertise with the right automation tools.

The Win-Win That Actually Works

I'm not in the website business. But having these capabilities means I can deliver what my clients need without the traditional bottlenecks. Take the client I'm working with next week — they need a landing page for a new service offering. Instead of referring them to a web designer and waiting weeks, I can build it as part of our strategy session and have them testing it with real customers immediately.

The metaphor is everywhere in what I'm building: these new technologies don't just make things faster — they make quality outcomes accessible at a completely different cost structure.

That's the win-win I keep talking about. Better results, faster delivery, lower investment. Not theoretical — I just lived it this morning.

What This Means for You

If you're running a business and you've felt the pain of that standard 10-week, $16,000 experience, you know exactly what I'm describing. The endless emails, the delays, the feeling that simple things are being made complicated.

What excites me isn't just the efficiency — it's that we can now deliver genuine quality without the traditional overhead. As a service provider, my job is creating high-quality output that adds real value to your business while making it sustainable for me to deliver.

When the tools get better, everyone wins.

I'm genuinely curious where we'll be in six or twelve months as these capabilities continue developing. The paradigm shift feels like it's just getting started.

What's the one thing in your business that takes too long and costs too much — and what would happen if you could cut both by 90%?