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In February 2020, a month ahead of the lockdowns, I left the world of paychecks, W-2s, and office commutes. At first I had nothing planned: just take a few weeks to enjoy life and catch up on things around the house.

    Three people smiling
    Brad, Shelby, Ellie
    Papercrafts, the beginnings of wedding invitations, on a table
    The beginnings of wedding invitations
    A larger quantity of more-complete wedding invitations on a table
    Wedding invitations, closer to finished
    A kitchen in construction, handing top cabinets
    Hanging top cabinets before floors and bases
    A click-lock laminate floor, mid-installation
    Clicking and locking the floor
    A butcher block counter with a stainless sink fitted
    Prepping the butcher block counter before staining and install
    A full kitchen, aside from trim work
    Kitchens work without trim!

It didn’t take long for friends to reach out, seeing if I could do some freelance website work, which ended up being a lot of fun and taking up a decent chunk of April and May 2020 when I wasn’t catching up on Star Trek.

That freelancing experience made me believe I could go into business for myself, so on June 2, 2020, I filed the business name Solve it once LLC with the State of Michigan and got started trying to drum up clients.

Highlights from 3 years of so1ve

Here are a few cool things that have happened while being my own boss the last few years:

As the highlights show, I’ve spent a decent amount of time embedded on other teams, helping deliver big projects for big brands. While I love this kind of work, and especially the variety that comes with it, I’m also aiming to build more sites as Solve it once rather than on somebody else’s team.

My next big thing, outside of client work, is trying to build interest around frost, an easy-to-use free-and-open-source head start for making excellent Drupal 10 websites:

What Solve it once does

If you or someone you know is in the market for a website or other website-related services, so1ve may be for you:

  • Full Drupal (a content management system) websites
  • Two-week fixed-fee web development sprints
  • Affordable static ‘JAMstack’ websites that are hosted for free
  • Annual support plans
  • “Drop everything” emergency work
  • Consultation, contracting, work by the hour, and sub-contracting

Friends, family, friends of friends, family of friends, and all other permutations can get a 10% discount buying online using the discount code familyandfriends10 at checkout.

How to help

There are a lot of ways to help out, so I’ve categorized them below, depending on if you’re technical, if I’ve ever done work for you before, or if you only have a minute or two. Anything you can do helps, and I want to thank you in advance!

If I’ve done work for you before

If I’ve made you a website or done web work for you in the past, you have the power to make the biggest impact to my future business. Your honest reviews on any of the following sites (please don’t lie or leave a fake review) would be a huge boost:

If you’re into tech

It’s wild how much software is a popularity contest. Sometimes it feels really tough selling folks on free software! Every like and share of one of the following project pages could mean the next visitor will see the project as growing in popularity, rather than just some abandoned repository. Please like, or star, or fork, or otherwise show approval, for any of these open source projects:

The last two repos on the list are technically from Lower barriers, a nonprofit started by me and a couple good friends. We’ve put LB on hiatus for the last few months, but if you’re interested in joining and participating, please reach out to let me know your interest.

If you only have a minute or two

Likes and follows on various social media sites go a long way for showing legitimacy and juicing the algorithm (or whatever the kids say these days). If I’ve never done work for you and you don’t know what a GitHub is, leaving a like or a follow on any or all of these pages would be a massive, quick help.

If you saw this post linked on social media, you can also share it or make your own post linking to this blog, which would be hero-level awesome.

And of course, any time someone mentions they need a website or web developer, please send them my way: for business use [email protected] and (313) 509-7214.

Thank you very much!

Copyright, license, and documentation

© Copyright 2024 Brad Czerniak. Content is available under the
Creative Commons icon
CC BY-SA 4.0 .
Code is subject to the MIT License.