Every template starts at my desk around 10 PM. The house is quiet, the phone is on silent, and the only light is my monitor and the moon outside. That’s when the good ideas surface.
I begin with a single question: ‘What is the one action this template needs to make frictionless?’ For the client portal, it was ‘log a call in under 30 seconds.’ For the content calendar, it was ‘move a draft from idea to published without touching another tool.’
Then I build the minimum viable structure — usually three to five properties, one view, and a single template button. I test it on myself for a week. If I find myself working around it, I delete and start again. The final version is always what remains after subtracting everything unnecessary.