Most personal sites start with a template and end with a landing page nobody visits. I wanted something different: a site that demonstrates how I think, not just what I've done. So I built k8mak.com the same way I build products for clients - with real strategy work, not aesthetic preferences dressed up as decisions.
The process
I used a 15-step product strategy process refined across dozens of client engagements. The same sequence I'd run for a $2.7B CRO client or a seed-stage health tech startup.
The steps: JTBD and persona research, market sizing, competitive analysis, north star metric definition, an OKR workshop, opportunity solution trees, RICE scoring, roadmap construction, journey mapping, a pre-mortem, security review, PRD writing, story mapping, and a coherence audit. Each artifact feeds the next.
Not every step was equally useful for a personal site. Four shaped nearly every decision that followed.
Jobs-to-be-done research
I identified seven jobs this site needed to serve. Two were obvious: career transitioners looking for AI tools, and independent consultants building their practice infrastructure. The most important job emerged late - a VP or Director of Product evaluating whether I'm the right hire. I named her Hannah.
Hannah doesn't want a skill catalog or a free tool. She wants to see how I think, how I've handled complexity, and whether my experience pattern-matches to her open role. That single persona reshaped the entire site architecture. Portfolio case studies moved from marketing afterthought to highest-priority content.
The other revelation: after leaving my last role, I wasn't just serving Marcus (the solo consultant persona). I was Marcus. Going independent validated every assumption I'd made about that persona's pain points, because I was living them. "I built this because I needed it" is the strongest positioning a product person can have.
OKR workshop
I ran a proper OKR workshop against a 90-day window. The objective: establish k8mak.com as a credible professional surface and validate one paid product.
Four key results:
- Receive 5+ inbound inquiries (interview requests or consulting leads) attributable to the site
- Publish 6+ blog posts demonstrating product thinking, with at least 2 ranking page 1
- Launch one product (a Consulting Starter Pack at $49-79) and generate $500+ in revenue
- Achieve 100+ monthly qualified engagements by day 90
The north star metric - Monthly Qualified Engagements - was the most important decision. It counts portfolio deep reads, tool completions, blog engagement, contact form submissions, and purchases in a single number. One metric that captures whether the site is doing its job.
RICE scoring
I scored every feature candidate and the results surprised me. The "Why Breadth" framing section - three paragraphs on the About page explaining why my cross-domain career is a strength, not a lack of focus - scored a RICE of 5,000. Higher than almost every feature that would take ten times longer to build.
This blog post scored 5,760. A portfolio narrative polish scored 1,600. The "How I Work" page scored 1,714.
The pattern: high-impact, low-effort content work consistently outscored new features. RICE doesn't care about what's fun to build. It cares about what moves the metric.
Pre-mortem
Before writing a single line of code, I ran a pre-mortem. I imagined it was August 17 and the project had underperformed. What went wrong?
The risks I identified:
The "Why Pay?" problem. Career transitioners can get 80% of what my tools do from ChatGPT. The free tier needs to be good enough to build trust, and the paid product needs to deliver something genuinely harder to replicate.
Solo operator overload. I'd 8-12 hours per week for this work, down from the 20 hours I estimated in April. That constraint meant cutting scope aggressively - one paid product instead of three, four sprints instead of six.
Stream B might not work. There's no guarantee hiring managers visit candidate websites. If they don't, the entire portfolio-first strategy is wasted effort. The mitigation: UTM-tagged resume links so I can measure whether anyone actually clicks through.
The dual-stream tension. Is a site that serves both job seekers and tool users actually two strategies wearing a trenchcoat? I decided the overlap was genuine - the same blog post that impresses Hannah also ranks for search terms that reach Priya - but I flagged it as the biggest strategic risk.
What I built
The stack is deliberately boring: Next.js on Vercel, Tailwind, gray-matter for frontmatter, Vercel Analytics. No CMS, no database, no auth layer for the public site. What's on it:
Interactive tools. An AI Maturity Assessment, an AI Health Check, a Get Unstuck coaching tool. These serve the career transitioner and consultant personas. They also demonstrate that I build things, not just talk about building things.
Portfolio with case studies. Outcome-first case studies across 14 years of engagements. Each one structured as Situation, Approach, Impact - the format hiring managers scan when deciding whether to call.
Blog. Writing on product leadership, AI strategy, team coaching, and the work itself. Dual-purpose: thought leadership for Hannah, SEO for organic discovery.
Services and engagement models. Three ways to work together, designed around outcomes rather than hours billed.
A 340+ skill AI agent system. The site runs on Skillet, my consulting practice skill library. Every tool, every content workflow, every audit template is a reusable skill I also use with clients. The site isn't a brochure for my work - it's an artifact of it.
What I cut
RICE scoring and the pre-mortem killed more features than they approved. That's the point.
A testimonial carousel. Low-impact, high-maintenance. Client quotes are more credible embedded in case studies where they have context.
A pricing calculator. Sounded clever in brainstorming, scored poorly in RICE. Prospects who need a calculator aren't ready to buy.
Three paid products. The original plan included a PM Case Study Kit, an AI Playbook, and the Consulting Starter Pack. Revised plan ships one. Validate the model before scaling the catalog.
A newsletter signup. Deferred, not killed. At 8 hours a week, I can't sustain both a blog cadence and a newsletter. The blog serves the same audience-building purpose with lower operational cost.
An interactive resume timeline. The resume is a PDF. Hiring managers expect a PDF. Overengineering the format doesn't make the content more compelling.
Every cut traced back to the same logic: does this move a key result, and can I sustain it at 8-12 hours per week? If either answer was no, it was out.
The dual-stream model
The most unusual structural decision: two strategies running in parallel on the same site.
Stream A is the product business: free tools, a paid Consulting Starter Pack, and eventually a broader digital product catalog. Targets career transitioners and independent consultants.
Stream B is the professional surface: portfolio case studies, blog posts that show how I think, and enough social proof that a hiring manager can evaluate me without a phone screen. Targets VPs and Directors making hiring decisions.
The streams share infrastructure. The same blog post that ranks for "product strategy framework" also demonstrates strategic thinking to Hannah. The same portfolio page that shows Priya my engagement history shows a recruiter my industry breadth. The same tools that serve Marcus prove to Hannah that I build, not just advise.
Both streams serve the same north star: Monthly Qualified Engagements. The site succeeds when people engage deeply, regardless of which door they came through.
What shipped and how fast
The entire product strategy process ran in roughly two weeks of part-time work. The site build followed across 6 sprints. At time of writing: 20+ published blog posts, 5 interactive tools, a full portfolio, and a services section.
AI tooling was the force multiplier. I used Claude to run every step of the strategy process, draft and refine content, build the site, and write this post. The skill library that powers the site is the same one I used to build it. That's not a parlor trick - it's a proof point. If I'm going to sell AI-powered consulting tools, the most credible thing I can do is use them visibly.
Shipping velocity matters more than polish. A site with real content and working tools outperforms a beautiful site with placeholder text. Every week the portfolio sat unpublished was a week Hannah couldn't find me.
What's next
The foundation is down. Next 90 days are about validation: do hiring managers actually visit candidate sites? Do career transitioners complete the tools? Does the Consulting Starter Pack sell?
If you're a product leader thinking about building your own site: run the same process you'd run for a client. Your site is a product. Define the jobs it needs to do, score the features, cut what doesn't move the metric, and ship before you're comfortable.
Want to work together?
I help teams ship better products. Let's talk about your situation.
Get in touch