


After a significant pause, Yoana and James reconnected to restart her personal website project (15:03). Yoana is currently on maternity leave through May 18th and wants to make focused progress while her mom is visiting and helping with the baby. Her full-time job provides her primary income, but she's building toward taking on side engagements in justice work and legal consulting, which makes having a simple professional web presence a priority.
Yoana articulated two clear intentions for the website (54:40):
The site should feel personal and impactful without being exhaustive - not everything about her life, just the meaningful highlights.
Much of the foundational work from the earlier engagement remains usable:
ioana.live (the deliberationcollective.net domain will be allowed to expire since a former colleague now runs a similar collective Yoana is part of)Yoana noted that sifting through photos via Discord and browsing templates were the main time sinks previously, and she'd prefer to avoid those steps this round (32:28).
After exploring options, the team landed on Squarespace as the right platform for this project (47:13). Key reasons:
James demonstrated an emerging approach where sites are hosted on GitHub [tag="github"] and managed conversationally through Claude [tag="claude"] - no manual CMS editing required (35:19). He showed a complex personal project (a global directory of artists, musicians, and activists) built largely through this workflow, plus a simpler client prototype where new pages, content edits, and images can be added just by dialoguing with Claude.
The tradeoff: Claude-managed sites require less manual work but add an AI intermediary between the user and the output. Squarespace offers more direct control. Yoana was intrigued by the Claude/GitHub approach as a future direction but wants to start with Squarespace to build hands-on familiarity (47:13).
James emphasized that the next critical step is content (56:28). Yoana will revisit the Google Doc outline and update it with:
The previous draft was likely too long - modern personal sites are shorter, and the offerings section in particular should grab attention rather than exhaustively explain her methodology (57:27). Yoana plans to use Perplexity to help refine tone and tighten copy.
James will also share precedent sites from past personal brand and consultant clients to help Yoana find reference points that resonate without becoming templates.
Yoana wants a muted background with vibrant pops of color, echoing the yellow, red, and green of her logo. She likes clean fonts and boxed layouts, and wants to avoid the dense, endlessly-scrolling homepage pattern she saw on some friends' sites. Roughly 10 photos should be sufficient - far fewer than originally planned.
The original proposal was $2,000 total, with $1,000 already paid. The original scope included five creative sessions, style guide, logo, Squarespace setup, sitemap and content coaching, graphic assets, and site customizations. James estimates they're roughly halfway through.
Plan going forward:
Yoana also flagged interest in eventually creating a brand kit and newsletter through Squarespace for social media consistency.
Yoana Tchoukleva
deliberationcollective.net expire; proceed with ioana.live as the primary domain (51:34)James Redenbaugh
After a significant pause, Yoana and James reconnected to restart her personal website project (15:03). Yoana is currently on maternity leave through May 18th and wants to make focused progress while her mom is visiting and helping with the baby. Her full-time job provides her primary income, but she's building toward taking on side engagements in justice work and legal consulting, which makes having a simple professional web presence a priority.
Yoana articulated two clear intentions for the website (54:40):
The site should feel personal and impactful without being exhaustive - not everything about her life, just the meaningful highlights.
Much of the foundational work from the earlier engagement remains usable:
ioana.live (the deliberationcollective.net domain will be allowed to expire since a former colleague now runs a similar collective Yoana is part of)Yoana noted that sifting through photos via Discord and browsing templates were the main time sinks previously, and she'd prefer to avoid those steps this round (32:28).
After exploring options, the team landed on Squarespace as the right platform for this project (47:13). Key reasons:
James demonstrated an emerging approach where sites are hosted on GitHub [tag="github"] and managed conversationally through Claude [tag="claude"] - no manual CMS editing required (35:19). He showed a complex personal project (a global directory of artists, musicians, and activists) built largely through this workflow, plus a simpler client prototype where new pages, content edits, and images can be added just by dialoguing with Claude.
The tradeoff: Claude-managed sites require less manual work but add an AI intermediary between the user and the output. Squarespace offers more direct control. Yoana was intrigued by the Claude/GitHub approach as a future direction but wants to start with Squarespace to build hands-on familiarity (47:13).
James emphasized that the next critical step is content (56:28). Yoana will revisit the Google Doc outline and update it with:
The previous draft was likely too long - modern personal sites are shorter, and the offerings section in particular should grab attention rather than exhaustively explain her methodology (57:27). Yoana plans to use Perplexity to help refine tone and tighten copy.
James will also share precedent sites from past personal brand and consultant clients to help Yoana find reference points that resonate without becoming templates.
Yoana wants a muted background with vibrant pops of color, echoing the yellow, red, and green of her logo. She likes clean fonts and boxed layouts, and wants to avoid the dense, endlessly-scrolling homepage pattern she saw on some friends' sites. Roughly 10 photos should be sufficient - far fewer than originally planned.
The original proposal was $2,000 total, with $1,000 already paid. The original scope included five creative sessions, style guide, logo, Squarespace setup, sitemap and content coaching, graphic assets, and site customizations. James estimates they're roughly halfway through.
Plan going forward:
Yoana also flagged interest in eventually creating a brand kit and newsletter through Squarespace for social media consistency.
Yoana Tchoukleva
deliberationcollective.net expire; proceed with ioana.live as the primary domain (51:34)James Redenbaugh

Send remaining $1,000 payment for website project
Yoana to send the remaining $1,000 of the $2,000 total project fee. Original $1,000 already paid. Referenced at 01:07:36.

Update Google Doc website outline with refined content, intentions, and accomplishments
April 27, 2026
Yoana to revisit the shared Google Doc outline and update it with overall intentions for each section, specific copy where available, and a list of accomplishments, publications, and milestones to feature. Due by Monday. Referenced at 01:08:35 and 56:28.

Review Squarespace templates and personal-brand inspiration sites and gather additional visuals
Yoana to browse Squarespace templates and review personal-brand/consulting precedent sites shared by James. Gather any additional photos or visuals (~10 photos target). Referenced at 59:43.

Text James on Monday with progress update and schedule next working session
April 27, 2026
Yoana to text James on Monday with an update on her content progress and to schedule the next working session. Referenced at 01:11:11.

Allow deliberationcollective.net to expire and proceed with ioana.live as primary domain
Yoana to take no action on renewing deliberationcollective.net and confirm ioana.live as the sole primary domain for the project. A former colleague now runs a similar collective. Referenced at 51:34.

Resend project proposal as a PDF to Yoana
James to resend the original project proposal as a PDF since the Bonsai link has expired. Referenced at 01:10:49.

Share precedent examples of personal-brand and consulting websites with Yoana
James to share examples from past personal brand and consultant client projects to help Yoana find design and content reference points that resonate. Referenced at 58:34.

Generate interactive Squarespace mockups from Yoana's updated content
James to build interactive Squarespace mockups once Yoana delivers her updated Google Doc content. Contingent on content draft being completed first. Referenced at 33:02.

Support content refinement and narrative shaping once Yoana's draft is submitted
James to help refine and shape Yoana's website copy once the updated Google Doc draft is received. Focus on tightening the offerings section and overall narrative. Referenced at 56:28.

Drive project toward end-of-May launch ahead of Portugal travel
May 31, 2026
James to manage project timeline and deliverables to ensure site launches by end of May before he departs for a conference in Portugal followed by vacation. Referenced at 01:08:02.

Identify any iStock images/videos that could work on website
May 4, 2026
Complete Yoana Tchoukleva's personal website transitioning from GitHub prototype to final launch. Project is resuming after pause - foundational work already complete including logo design in Figma, initial content draft, and domain secured (ioana.live). Current phase involves two-track approach: Phase 1 launching existing HTML/CSS/JS site hosted on GitHub with Claude AI integration for easy editing during James's travel (May 28-June 12); Phase 2 involves potential Squarespace conversion post-June 12 based on Claude workflow experience. Site structure includes: homepage hero with static sunset photo replacing video, 'Why This Work' section, short bio with credentials, five core offerings with icons/images (each linking to detailed pages), publications page restructured with categories (Selected Work, Resolutions, Other Writing, Featured In), and potential blog. Each offering (conflict resolution, policy design, ritual/ceremony, political strategy, systemic change) will have concise homepage summary linking to full offering pages. Design direction is warm, bright, and inviting with vibrant accent colors from logo. Current work includes: replacing homepage background video with static sunset photo, executing photo swaps across multiple pages using references from Figma and Google Drive, reformatting photo crops on Offerings and Bio pages, completing publications section restructure with proper categories and direct links pulled from Google Doc, setting up Claude + GitHub editing workflow for client self-service updates. Claude Pro subscription required at $20/month for natural language editing interface that works via voice or text - ideal for Yoana's workflow as new mom working in short increments. Publications filter bar being removed due to insufficient volume. Identity labels on homepage being refined with multiple descriptors (attorney, lecturer, etc.) potentially rotating on mobile. Decision on final platform (GitHub vs Squarespace) to be made after James returns June 12 based on Yoana's experience with Claude workflow during his absence. Follow-up meeting scheduled for week of June 15th to assess workflow and finalize platform choice. Launch target: end of May 2026 or post-June 15 depending on workflow evaluation.
00:00:04
Yoana: This meeting is being recorded.
00:13:31
James Redenbaugh: Testing, 1, 2, 3.
00:13:54
Yoana: Hi, James.
00:13:55
James Redenbaugh: Hi, Joanna.
00:13:57
Yoana: Hi. Love to see you.
00:13:59
James Redenbaugh: Good to see you. How are you, my little baby girl? Oh, hello, darling.
00:14:05
Yoana: Hello, sweetheart. And like he's in my arms a lot in meetings and things. I'm trying to keep her off looking at the screen, you know, so little and screen time is not so good.
00:14:24
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, yeah.
00:14:26
Yoana: I might go off camera just for a few minutes because I have to nurse her, but I will, I will be here.
00:14:31
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, no problem. Whatever you need, Miss.
00:14:34
Yoana: How are you doing?
00:14:36
James Redenbaugh: I'm doing pretty well.
00:14:38
Yoana: Congratulations on your recent wedding.
00:14:42
James Redenbaugh: Right, yeah.
00:14:44
Yoana: Yeah, congratulations. Happy to hear that.
00:14:48
James Redenbaugh: Thanks so much. Congratulations on becoming a mother.
00:14:52
Yoana: Thank you. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my life and I really cannot, like, it could not be my life could not be more different than what it was before.
00:15:03
James Redenbaugh: I bet it seems like you're loving it and you're doing a great job.
00:15:10
Yoana: Thank you. Yes. I'm trying. It's not always easy, you know, but we're trying, you know. Well, happy to reconnect. It's been ages and I'm just, yeah. Trying to see if I can use some of this time especially my mom is here visiting for another week and a half, so I have a little bit of time, more time than normal on my hands given the baby that I can kind of restart this website work so that I'm in a better place when I start. My maternity event ends on May 18th, so I do, you know, I do have a full time job and that's where most all my income comes from. But I am starting to want to do, like we said before, just some things on the side, pay, getting paid for sort of justice work or even some legal work. And it would be good to just have a simple website. Does not have to include everything about my whole life, but just have a little bit of information about me and so, yeah, why don't we revisit kind of where we left things off and we'd love to hear your thoughts on how we could move forward.
00:16:28
James Redenbaugh: Great. Yeah, Sounds good. Yeah. What is, what's your sense of where we left off? You probably have a better sense than me at this point. Yeah, I'm sure so much has changed, but.
00:16:51
Yoana: Yeah, I mean, I can open my notes here. You had, we had, you know, we had met, we had made this agreement that I was going to do a bunch of the work myself, so it's a little bit cheaper. I know you guys have different kinds of packages. We had, we worked Together to put. We worked to put together a really beautiful logo. I remember that part. I was very excited about that. And use your like little software with the arrows to make that happen. And then I put together some text that now I'm sure needs to be updated. I haven't read it since, but I'm just looking at the text myself on a Google Doc. And then you gave me a title, have that link. But I can. If I search through the emails, I'll probably find it. You gave me like, what do you. What do you call that? A whiteboard? No, something board. Bonsai board. Something. I don't know what it was, but some kind of board where we were putting together photos and just like a layout of the different. Of the different tabs.
00:18:11
James Redenbaugh: Huh? Yeah.
00:18:14
Yoana: And then that's. And that's when I was gathering photos from my phone and putting them on the board and. And then this is kind of all I remember. This is as far as we got, I think.
00:18:28
James Redenbaugh: Cool.
00:18:30
Yoana: But a lot can be reused. I mean, I remember the logo was cool. You know, some of the photos can be reused. I just need to edit some of the text. I'm sure.
00:18:40
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:18:41
Yoana: And then now that we have like we said, like, you know, I can pay a little bit more. So you guys do more of the work and I do less of the work. And we have AI tools, you know, I'm sure in place as well. So they can help.
00:18:57
James Redenbaugh: We do. Let me see if I can find that board that we were working on.
00:19:04
Yoana: Do you know what the web, the. The project, the platform is called.
00:19:08
James Redenbaugh: There's a number of things like that that we've used and I thought it would be Miro, but I'm not seeing it there. I probably sent it to you at some point.
00:19:24
Yoana: Check, maybe text. Sorry, one second here.
00:19:46
James Redenbaugh: I think we were working in Figma. Let me bring this up. Okay. Yeah. Does this look familiar?
00:20:28
Yoana: Yes, that looks right. You just give me like a few minutes. I have to send off my daughter with my mom, so give me a quick second while you review.
00:20:38
James Redenbaugh: Take your time.
00:22:26
Yoana: It's. Sa. Okay, I'm back. Sorry, we had a little car seat situation.
00:30:57
James Redenbaugh: No problem.
00:30:59
Yoana: I'm like everything is now on her, you know, on her time, on her way. And I just. Yeah, I have to just apologize to everybody for not being on time with things.
00:31:09
James Redenbaugh: That's okay. I totally understand.
00:31:14
Yoana: Okay, let's look through it together. I'm sure you found a thing or two along the way.
00:31:19
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:31:30
Yoana: There you go. Okay, so. Yeah, so there's our little Logo.
00:31:41
James Redenbaugh: Yes.
00:31:44
Yoana: And then Figma. That's what it was. Got it.
00:31:48
James Redenbaugh: Yeah.
00:31:49
Yoana: And then we had worked through like about. There is about Me offerings, publications, contact. That sounds good.
00:31:58
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. I think it's worth looking through this again. But also. We can totally start fresh. We don't need to limit ourselves to this structure, this.
00:32:28
Yoana: I remember what was taking me a lot of time. I remember what was taking me a lot of time was using the discord and trying to get the right images. That was taking me a lot of time. Too much time.
00:32:40
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, well, don't worry about that for now. Do you remember this Google Doc website outline?
00:32:55
Yoana: Yeah.
00:32:57
James Redenbaugh: Have you had a chance to look at this recently?
00:33:00
Yoana: No, but I will.
00:33:02
James Redenbaugh: So if you want to revisit this and update it, get it to a point where you have a clear articulation of how you'd like your website to function and what you'd like to include, then. These days I can create mockups pretty easily of the entire site, so we can look at things in context and play with things instead of just wireframes. And in Figma, I can take this whole doc and generate an interactive site using your logo and some brand colors. Then we can talk about how that looks and feels and see what we'd need to do to get it to a point where you're stoked to use it. And I think that we were talking about Squarespace last year, is that right?
00:34:22
Yoana: I don't remember if it was Squarespace, but Squarespace would be good, I think. My partner's website. Sweetie, your website is on Squarespace. Yeah, my partner's website is on Squarespace, so it'll be good for me to learn how to use it.
00:34:34
James Redenbaugh: Cool. Yeah. So Squarespace is still a possibility. What AI tools are you using these days? Do you use Claude?
00:34:47
Yoana: I'm not. I'm so. I'm so not an expert on AI. The only one that I really use is Perplexity because it's more research based and I started using it for some of the commission work I've been doing and I don't even. I've never even used ChatGPT, believe it or not, and I've never used Claude, but I have to learn these things anyway, so if you want to. If. If you think I need to learn or use one of the others, let me know.
00:35:19
James Redenbaugh: Well, I was gonna say if you're. If you're already using Claude and you're familiar with it some. We're starting to make websites now that are fully managed by Claude. So instead of logging into Squarespace and making edits manually. You would just ask Claude to do it and Claude would.
00:35:42
Yoana: So it has a interface with Squarespace.
00:35:48
James Redenbaugh: We wouldn't use Squarespace in that. Oh, in that case, the site would just be hosted on, on GitHub and then Claude would interface with GitHub to make changes for you.
00:36:03
Yoana: Is that, Is that the. Is there another. Is like, Is there another. Like. Does Perplexity have one that they work with or is it. That's the best one you have? We have so far. Is Claude with GitHub?
00:36:19
James Redenbaugh: Yes, because perplexity,.
00:36:24
Yoana: They shouldn't do that stuff.
00:36:25
James Redenbaugh: Well, it's. Perplexity is more of an ecosystem, I think that they use different models on their back end. They don't actually train and create the models that they use. So I'm not sure if they have something like that, but they would probably just be using Claude if they did. But it's, it's definitely not necessary. And there are, There are trade offs because you.
00:37:15
Yoana: Yeah, if you want to show me, maybe that would be good. And yeah, share the trade offs because I can see how, if I learn to do it manually, at least I know how to do it myself, no matter what. And then when you rely on the AI, that's it. The AI does it. And however they do it, they do it. You can't fix, you know, you can't adjust and refine things too much.
00:37:36
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So it's, it's pretty incredible what they can do these days. But what you can get out of an AI is pretty dependent on what you can put in. So like this, this website for example, I made, it's very, very complex, lots of features, three dimensional, big database of artists and musicians and activists around the world and so cool.
00:38:24
Yoana: What is this? I want to see that. I want to. Is it like books or.
00:38:29
James Redenbaugh: It's. It's books, music, musicians, artists, philosophers mostly like younger people I found doing cool, awakening things around the planet. I felt like there wasn't enough like visibility of who's doing cool stuff that's conscious and transcendent and wow, like revolutionary. So I thought I'd start a little collection and, and people can contribute their own, their own people. And if you're in the mood to just listen to music, you can filter by musician and click a profile and it opens a little player and you can just play their music right there.
00:39:35
Yoana: This is really cool, James. I love this.
00:39:38
James Redenbaugh: Thanks. I was able to make this entirely with. I used Claude, I actually also used Gemini and it's all hosted on GitHub. And I fed it certain things like, of course, the content and the image I'm using in the background of the earth and pretty specific details. But it coded a lot of this itself. And, you know, if I want to change the font or the colors or anything like that, I can do that pretty easily just by asking Claude to do that, basically. A more simple example is a prototype I made for a client the other day. This is hosted on GitHub as well. Claude made the hero. It made a lot of the content as well. Because we're, we're just prototyping things, wanting to see things in context. This isn't a finished, polished site that we want to put out there, but you can see that it gets us a lot of the way there. I'm not sure if we'll stay in this format or build it in webflow, but you could see that we could stay in this format. And if the client wanted to, say, add a new page, it could create a Google Doc with the content of that page. And it could even upload images to a Google Drive folder and say to Claude, like, can you create this page? Can you do it like this? You know, let me have a, have a look at it before you put it in the navigation so it's live. And then they could see that and go back and forth with Claude until it's what they want. Or if they want to add a new blog post or a new section to a page or edit the content, they would just dialogue with Claude to have Claude do that. I'll show you real quick. On the back end in GitHub, it just looks like this, where we have some asset folders, some team folders, and some HTML pages. The about page looks like this HTML. And if I didn't want to use Claude for some reason, or if I wanted to use another LLM that talks to my GitHub, I could go in here, into the HTML and just update the content manually, Like so. And that is. One approach. For some of my own sites, like we were just looking at, I'll do that. For other things where I want more precise control over what I'm doing, I use webflow. If I wasn't familiar with webflow, I would probably use Squarespace because it's, it's so easy to use and it's hard to make things look bad. Let's see if we can. Oh, they have an AI website builder. Of course. You can start with templates that make it even easier. This is Squarespace now. Yeah. And customize those Templates. It makes it really easy to just, you know, go in, add a photo somewhere where there's not a photo, or update the photo or the text, or add a, a newsletter sign up or a blog or things like that. It's just, it's made to be easy. It's harder to make things that feel really special. But we can, we can help you with that. You know, we can add custom features into, into Squarespace to make the site feel a little more unique to you and what you want it to do. And I, you know, it's worth signing up for a free Squarespace account and playing with it and see if it feels like something you want to use. You can get your partner to show you his and feel it out.
00:45:16
Yoana: Yeah, I think I made one back in the day when we were working together. I think I made a free Squarespace or I made a Squarespace account. I think it may have even been a paid one. And let me see if I can log into it. And the. What would you say is easier to use? Claude and GitHub or Squarespace? Less time?
00:45:50
James Redenbaugh: It's hard to say because it's, It's so different. It's like I'm trying to think of an analogy. It's kind of like saying, you know, what's an easier major in college? Art or English.
00:46:18
Yoana: Yeah, I understand. Depends on you.
00:46:20
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, it depends on you and the relationship that you want to have to the site where with Claude it can be easier because you have Claude on your team to go and do things. You don't have to do things manually, but you will have that AI intermediary between you and the, and the output. With Squarespace, it's, it's more DIY when you want to edit something or change something. But you know, what you see is what you get and you have that full control.
00:47:13
Yoana: Yeah. I would like to learn to use Squarespace so I can also help with my partner's website as he's still developing it. But I do feel like the future is Cloud and GitHub. So that's also something that I, I would like to learn over time. But we can, we can, I think probably just work with Squarespace. I did log in and I can show you what I have.
00:47:51
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, let's see.
00:47:53
Yoana: It's not something we didn't get far or nothing, it's just. But I did want to show you this says website renews on June 18, 2026. Does that mean that I bought a domain name? Probably. Did I buy a domain?
00:48:07
James Redenbaugh: Probably. Anyways. Yeah. You might have paid for a year of Squarespace.
00:48:17
Yoana: Yeah, but I didn't. I didn't do anything on it. It was just. I just found some template and looked through the template. Probably. That's the template. And then how do I see what's on my account, what I paid for? Let's see. Domains deliberation. Ioana Lived one. With this, I have two domain names. Deliberationcollective.net and live. Ioana live. Is that right?
00:49:17
James Redenbaugh: I guess so. What's in Ioana Live?
00:49:23
Yoana: Is it breaking up on your site? No, I don't know why it's. I can. I'm just. The WI fi is breaking up for me. I'm gonna go off camera. Can you hear me okay?
00:49:38
James Redenbaugh: Yes.
00:49:39
Yoana: Okay. Yeah. It looks like we have two domain name domain names. What is in you want to do live is probably nothing, but I have renew auto renews in 2027. Somewhere in my notes, I'm sure we have that. We were looking at the different domains. It. Yeah, I don't. I guess we bought you on a Dub Life. I guess I bought it and that was probably the best I could find at the time. And it works. I mean it's simple. It's just a little bit funny. But yeah. Anyway, it looks like that's how far I got. We have, you know, this. This Liberation Collective or some was an idea from a. Was an idea from a past long gone, I think, where I wanted to do some work with others and form a collective with like mediation and restorative justice and. And legal work. And coincidentally, one of my friends, my former colleagues at the DA's office started a collective that has a similar idea. So I'm now on her website as one of the people in her collective. So I'm just gonna stay there. I support her and love her so much. So I'm gonna leave liberationcollective.net for now and see if I want to renew it later for 20 bucks or let it expire. But for my website we can use the Undo life.
00:52:05
James Redenbaugh: Cool, great. Sounds good.
00:52:10
Yoana: But yeah, I don't think there's anything here in terms of. Yeah, and I can update my registration here and my address, all that stuff. So what should we. Yeah, let's go with Squarespace. And then I. I don't want to sift through templates. I remember spending quite a bit of time doing that as well. And I just. I found all the templates to be very similar and you know, could not. It wasn't easy to. To choose one because they were also Similar and got bored with it. So if any of those things, you know, are things that you can. You guys can handle, that would be helpful. Yeah, Totally different options. And I think we talked about it. I want the colors to be like. I guess this one that I had found had some good colors, Like overall, you know, like a kind of a more muted background with some colors and then pop up. Sounds good to me. The logo colors, the yellow, the reds, the green. I don't like the background here color here. I don't like the muted green background very much. But I remember, I think I like this one because of the font. I like the font and I like the. The boxes over. So that's that. And so what do you. What should. What do we see as the next steps? I need to work on the text.
00:54:27
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Work on the content. Taking a step back, what can you tell me as a. Is like your overall intention, Right. For the website?
00:54:40
Yoana: Yeah, I mean, I think it's still. It's really two things. One is if I do want to do. If I want to have some gigs outside of my job that help pay my life and mortgage and support my family is My income to my job is not huge. So letting the, you know, folks mostly here in the barrier and. But also, you know, a lot of more things are online now around the world. Know a little bit of who I am and what I'm offering. And the second part is really to have a central place where I can keep, even if it's just for myself, like track of the. The publications, the podcasts, the, you know, not everything that I do, but big milestone things, moments. Because life moves fast. My life generally has tended to move really fast. And now that I'm, you know, I'm getting older and I have a daughter and I can barely remember what I did. And I just want there to be like, you know, a central place where I can record my accomplishments and then be able to look at and feel proud and, you know, one day be able to show my child like, hey, this is my little website. This is. These are some of the things I've done in my life.
00:56:28
James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Wonderful. Great. So I think that you should reflect on that and write as much as you can in this document about what you want to be there. And it can be vague and it can be specific. Specific. So it can be just kind of overall intention about what you want to include. And then it can also be like, here's the. Here's the content. Here's what I want to say here. Here's the list of those accomplishments I want to put out there and then we can take that and look at that together and see what's more missing, what graphics want to be created and how does it want to come together into a cohesive experience?
00:57:27
Yoana: Yeah, exactly. I think one of the places where I can get stuck and was getting stuck on before is on the exact content. And I think I just. Yeah, I need to zoom out or I need to read what I had and zoom out and see if it still resonates and, and make it more simple, probably. I think looking at all this, it was. My guess is that there was a lot of writing and websites now are much shorter. And the idea is, at least with the offerings. Right. The idea is to get somebody's attention, not to explain exactly how I do everything I do. Yeah, yeah, got it. Do you have other clients you've worked with or websites you work with or, you know, people like me who are doing, let's say, consulting or policy work or advocacy and just. It would be helpful to look at a few more examples of how people describe their work.
00:58:34
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, definitely. I don't have anybody specifically in policy advocacy space, but have definitely done a lot of personal brands, consultants, and I could find some precedents for you as well. But I can also just, you know, help you take the, the, the vaguer inputs that you can give me and, you know, workshop that into clear content and narrative about, you know, the particular person that, that you are and what you're trying to do. Because there's no, there's no one right way to do it, of course. And we want the special elements that you bring to come across.
00:59:43
Yoana: Yeah. This is one you shared with me, I think, isn't it? Yeah. This is somebody's personal website. I remember. So I saved that one. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. There is no, there's no template. I don't want to be just like this person. So I have to. Yeah, it's good to, It's good to. I mean, some of this, right, is like deeper reflection and spiritual work of like, who I am and how I want to come across that is a little bit harder to do at this time in my life just because of the baby and just not having, like, oh, here's my three hour chunk of time to reflect. But in the other ways I can still try to do it. So I will, I will do that and I will look through. I think my friend Sonia Mehta has her website metaphor is called Metamorphosis. I'll look through some brand websites to See, like, here's this one. This is my friend. You see it? Yeah. So I like. I like her little style, you know, her little. She's using camera for this, I think. And she. And I like that. It's very, like. It has a lot of photos and it's bright. I don't like the formatting here. Some funny stuff happened here. This was a photo shoot we did in my own. In the place that I used to live in. So it's good to see those photos being used past clients and partners. Yeah. Anyway, she has a lot of good stuff. It's too long. It keeps on going down, down, down forever. Is this the way it's done now? It's like everything ends up on the first page, but then you can also click on these tabs. But you have to have everything on your first page, your homepage.
01:02:16
James Redenbaugh: Not necessarily. The first page is the most important page, and you want to put a lot there. But this feels like a lot of. A lot of content. And it's very dense.
01:02:34
Yoana: Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot and too much. It keeps going, huh? Okay. Yeah. Okay. I don't want this much. Yeah, but I like this part. I like this forest in the background. And. Anyways, okay, so I'll look through, I'll get some inspiration. I'll do some reflection. I'll put some things on on my Google Doc and then you can work with it and I can. Is there a way that I can use. I guess I can use Perplexity to help me, like with some content updates and making things uniform or making things more succinct and playful. Right? Yeah. Like my bio and things like that should probably be shortened and updated a little bit. Great. Okay, so I'll use. I'll work on content. What else? Anything. I guess we just work on content first and then we'll deal with puddles later.
01:03:58
James Redenbaugh: Mm, yeah, exactly.
01:04:03
Yoana: And why were we looking at. Oh, can you give me the link to the figma?
01:04:08
James Redenbaugh: Yes.
01:04:14
Yoana: I'm trying to remember. Why were we looking at so many photos? Why was I going through my entire phone? It must have been that I wanted to, like, I don't know, showcase my work. But really, the website doesn't need to have more than 10 photos, right?
01:04:35
James Redenbaugh: No. Yeah, there's a link to the figma.
01:04:42
Yoana: Okay, got it. Maybe it was for the publication section that I wanted to have things from photos from different parts of my life, different times of my life. Okay. And so what do you remember where we left off with? I mean, I remember I sent the Initial payment, I think it was a thousand dollars. Do you remember where we left off with the proposal itself? Work proposal?
01:05:25
James Redenbaugh: Yeah. So.
01:05:29
Yoana: I have the bonsai link, but it no longer works.
01:05:33
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, I just opened it up. I can. I think I can. I'll just send you a PDF of it. Initially, we. So the proposal included five creative sessions, style guide, a personal brand logo assistance, Squarespace assistance with sitemap and content coaching, assistance with graphic asset creation, Squarespace site customizations. It's hard to say exactly, like, how much of this did we. Did we get done and what was left to do? In my mind, we were kind of halfway through and I think that we should kind of play things by ear here and see if we can, like, if, if I can help you. Efficiently and easily get to a place you're really happy with with your website. I don't think we need to expand our budget, but if we get into it and you want us to do more design and build out pages and things like that, we can just invoice you hourly for whatever that takes. But I don't think it needs to be anything excessive.
01:07:22
Yoana: Okay, and what was. How much was it that we had the total for? Was it 2000 or 2500?
01:07:28
James Redenbaugh: 2000.
01:07:29
Yoana: 2000. Okay, great. And then how much have I paid of that? I think a thousand.
01:07:36
James Redenbaugh: One thousand?
01:07:36
Yoana: Yeah, one thousand. Okay. And so how do you want to move forward with the rest? Should I pay the other thousand now or how do you work? Yeah,.
01:07:53
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, that'd be good. Do we want to set a. A launch date? Yeah. Timeline. What. What would be ideal for you?
01:08:02
Yoana: Yeah. How much? Well, I don't know how long these kinds of process usually take, obviously. Depends on how much time I put into it to get going. I think my goal is to work on it. Let's. Yeah, my goal is to have some updated text and thoughts for you by Monday.
01:08:35
James Redenbaugh: Okay.
01:08:37
Yoana: And you know, and then. Yeah, I'm sure there's going to be quite a bit of work in terms of refining the content and the photos and branding and you know, I do want to have. I guess we didn't talk about this part, but like, I think this is easy to do with spirit. Squarespace. Right. Once you have a website and logo, you can create a newsletter or like a. I guess what I think it's called a brand kit. Right. That I can use for social media and things like that. Yeah. So what do you think is a good goal for a launch date?
01:09:25
James Redenbaugh: Yeah, I think if we're. It's almost May. I think that we should aim to get something online for, for you by the end of the month. By the end of May. I'm then going to a conference in Portugal and then I'll be on vacation for a couple weeks, so it'd be good for me to wrap up before then anyway. But as we get into things, if you want to have us do more design or you know, help you build out a piece that wasn't in our original proposal, we might want to expand our timeline and create a budget for that.
01:10:23
Yoana: Got it. Okay. I think the original proposal still sounds good to me. If you can send me a new bonsai link, that'd be great. Or, or the PDF so I can take a look at it. The link has expired and I can. Yeah, I can send over the thousand now and we can. Yeah, let's try to get it out by the end of May.
01:10:49
James Redenbaugh: Great, sounds good. Awesome. Yeah, I'll send you this just as a PDF. And let's get it done. We can check in next week after you've had some time with that content and start to look at things together and see, see what wants to happen next.
01:11:11
Yoana: Okay, great. I will text you. Yeah, I'll text you on Monday, let you know where I'm at and we can then make another meeting. If I've made some progress and if I haven't made any progress, it's because my life is busy with commission work and the baby. Yeah, I'm still on maternity leave, but I chair this commission that has to be write a four year violence reduction plan for the entire city of Oakland. And towards the end of that, we're towards the end of that process and incorporating some edits and working very intensively on, on the final draft. So things could kind of get heated up there. But I'm trying to use, you know, most effectively the time while my mom is here to make progress on the things that don't get done otherwise. So this, this has been on my mind for a long time and I know once I start full time work and it's gonna be even harder for me. So I think we can, we can use this time now.
01:12:13
James Redenbaugh: Great, Sounds good.
01:12:16
Yoana: Okay, well, thank you so much, James. I will talk to you soon. Have a good rest of your day and weekend.
01:12:22
James Redenbaugh: Thank you. Take care.
01:12:24
Yoana: Bye.
01:12:25
James Redenbaugh: Oh, my camera died. I'll see you later.
01:12:28
Yoana: No worries. Bye. Bye.
01:12:29
James Redenbaugh: Ciao.