marioseijo.com is live now.
Which feels a little strange to type, because this whole thing started with me admitting that my own website was embarrassing.
I build strategy-first websites for small businesses and organizations. I tell business owners all the time that the website should not be the first thing you think about. You have to get clear on what the site is for, what it needs to say, and what you want someone to do next.
Meanwhile, my own personal site was sitting there, dusty and outdated.
So I decided to rebuild it in public and use the exact method I use with my clients.
No shortcuts. No pretending. No opening a design tool just because I wanted to make something look pretty.
And now it is actually live.
The exciting part is not just the launch
Of course I’m glad the site is up.
But what has me more excited is that the method worked.
I got to see it hold up on a real project, with real decisions, real constraints, and real technical work at the end.
Strategy made the build calmer
The funny thing is, the build still got pretty technical by the end.
There was a public GitHub repo. A server at home. Docker. nginx. Cloudflare Tunnel. A clean deployment folder. Smoke tests. Tiny details like making sure the contact card downloads with the right file type.
All normal web stuff. All things that can get messy fast if the bigger decisions are still open.
But the hard thinking had already happened earlier, in plain text.
The site was a digital business card. It had one job: help someone remember me after we meet and know how to connect.
That made the build calmer. The technical work had something to follow.
That is the part I want clients to understand. Strategy is not a fancy document you make before the “real work” starts. Strategy is what keeps the build from becoming a pile of opinions.
AI worked because the notes were clear
Using AI to write the code was part of my strategy from the beginning.
So I prepared for it.
I wrote detailed notes: DESIGN.md, SEO.md, UX.md. My thoughts, art direction, taste, and decisions all had to be written down.
That is what made AI useful.
It was not guessing what kind of site I wanted. It was building from the strategy.
The agent helped turn the plan into code, test the site, fix rough edges, and document what happened along the way.
But the idea was already there.
It also showed me what to improve
The best part of building your own process on yourself is that you can feel where it is still rough.
This launch gave me ideas for the next rollout.
I want the strategy docs to get even cleaner before design starts. I want the launch checklist to be part of the system earlier, not something that shows up at the end. I want image assets, social preview images, icons, accessibility checks, analytics decisions, and deployment notes to have a clearer place from the beginning.
Nothing huge. Just the kind of little improvements you only notice when you execute on a plan.
That is why building in the open is useful to me.
It is not just marketing. It is how I make the work better.
When I show the process, I can see the process. I can improve it. And if someone is thinking about working with me, they do not have to guess how I think. They can watch it happen.
What I would tell a client
If a client came to me excited to jump straight into a new website, this is what I would tell them:
I get it. The design is the fun part. The build makes it feel like something is happening.
But slow down for a minute.
Before we touch the design, we need to know what the site is for. Who is showing up? What do they need to understand? What should they do next? What can we leave out?
That work can feel small because it happens in words, not visuals. But it is the work that makes the visuals useful.
My site is live because the build happened.
But it works because the strategy happened first.
That is the part I want to keep proving, one project at a time.
This is how I work at Minimo Studio: strategy first, design later, AI tools after the thinking is clear. I just got to watch that method come alive on my own site.
Less noise. More clarity.
