house roast — unsolicited, free
A cold visitor hits a magazine-cover headline and a memoir paragraph before they ever learn what this site is for—portfolio, product shop, or essay blog—so they bounce at the fold instead of choosing a path.
Fix. Lead with one concrete sentence of what a visitor can do here (see work, read essays, try CentsCheck) and demote the origin story below that.
“Building with the Modern Tools” is a mood board caption pretending to be a headline—it names a vibe and withholds the product, the offer, and why anyone should stay.
Fix. Lead with a concrete promise: what you ship, for whom, and the one outcome (e.g. “I ship small AI products I’d use daily—start with CentsCheck”).
The left column is a résumé throat-clear and the right column is a status widget; together they read like two tabs fighting for the fold instead of one argument.
Fix. Lead with one sentence of what this site is for, then nest the NOW list as a secondary rail or a single line under the headline.
The copy talks about the builder’s journey, not the visitor’s next five minutes, so the page feels like a LinkedIn about-section wearing a landing-page font.
Fix. Rewrite the lede as visitor outcomes: what they get if they click Work vs. the essay, in one line each.
“Years in consulting and startups; now learning and building my own things with AI” is a LinkedIn summary pasted above the fold—visitor benefit is zero until the last clause.
Fix. Cut the résumé and open with the work: one sentence on CentsCheck / the Stand, then a single line of bio if you still need it.
The hero treats 'Modern' like a logo lockup—italic, rust-red, and twice the emotional weight of the actual noun—so the page announces a type treatment, not a point of view.
Fix. Set the whole headline in one weight and color; put the opinion in a short subhead that names what you build and for whom.
The NOW rail name-drops products and an “AI-run micro-company” with zero proof, so the sidebar reads like a sticky note, not evidence.
Fix. Add one specific, checkable detail per item (live store links, a metric, a date) so the rail earns the click.
Trust is a black box labeled NOW: product names with no screenshot, no outcome, no date—so the sidebar looks like a sticky note, not evidence.
Fix. Add one still, one metric, or a last-updated line next to each NOW item so the rail earns the real estate.
Two equal-weight actions—View work and Read the essay—split the first decision, which is exactly when a skimmer closes the tab.
Fix. Pick one primary CTA for the default visitor and style the other as a quiet text link.
“Read the essay →” next to a black “View work” box is two equally polite exits; neither says what happens after the click or which one is the real door.
Fix. Make one primary CTA (“See CentsCheck”) and demote the essay to a text link with a specific title, not “the essay.”
Two equal-weight exits—'View work' as a filled brick and 'Read the essay' as a text link—split the fold into a shrug instead of a next step.
Fix. Pick one primary action for first-time visitors and demote the other to a quieter text link or a later section.
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