Finally building our own product. Firebase, Nuxt and AI

Most of the time, running a marketing/design/programming agency feels like a perfect fit. The only downside is that we ultimately have limited ownership in the products we build.

Before owning an agency, I spent a decade working for an association of custom home builders. Early on, I noticed a trend: the owners of the best firms would build themselves a new house every two years. The benefits were clear. They lived in beautiful houses, built at a 20% discount, significantly boosted their income when they sold them, and got to experience their own processes through the eyes of a client.

In many ways, my business is very similar to those custom home builders. By building our own products, we're taking a page from their playbook. This isn't just about generating additional revenue (though we certainly aim to do that too). Building for ourselves allows us to try new things, expand our skill set, and ensure that the process we use to build client applications actually works from all perspectives.

So, what are we building first?

I want our initial journey through this process to be as low-pressure as possible. I've put together a list of criteria the project needs to meet:

1. Personal utility: The project should solve a problem for me.
2. Mobile-focused: Standalone apps for iOS and Android.
3. Quick to launch: A maximum of five screens, not including authentication, with the first version ready in under eight weeks.
4. No grandiose expectations: We're not pivoting; this is an experiment and an extension of our existing services.

Several rounds of ideas led us to: High Noon, the group accountability app. It's a place reminiscent of the dusty street in an old western where you can issue a challenge, make a stand, and see who's left when the dust settles.

Think of it as streaks meeting 75-hard with group texting. We're in the third week of the building process and expect to have the V1 app live in about five more weeks.

Through the app, a user can issue a challenge and invite their friends and colleagues to join. We offer a dozen hand-picked fitness, nutrition, or self-improvement challenges, or users can design their own.

Challenges are essentially group to-do lists. Each member alerts the group when they've completed their daily task. They also set the challenge duration. Once all is said and done, we declare a winner—the person who has completed their daily challenge the most times.

Building a healthy life is tough, and we often can't get out of our own way—or at least, I can't. Facing obstacles alone, it's easy to rationalize deviations from the path. Our doubts overwhelm us, and we find a reason to stop.

The best science available tells us that having a strong support system can help us overcome these moments of doubt. Our odds of success improve if we tell people close to us about our commitment and rely on them for accountability. This is the real magic we aim to build with High Noon. We aim to wrap it in a novel, western themed UX.

Our project stack includes:

Nuxt.js
Vant and Vuetify
Firebase
Capacitor.js
Open AI (to provide each user with a "sidekick" that will help motivate them and talk trash to other members)

I'll have more details and demo ready to share in about a week!