Case Study - A Content & Courses App for Single Parents

The brief

Rachel Maksimovic runs a podcast for women going through separation — family law, money, co-parenting, starting over. The audience and the trust were already there. What was missing was somewhere to send a listener in the middle of one of those moments, who just needs to know what to do next.

Now What is the question they're already asking. Not "show me a feature" — "this has happened, what now."

What we built

A content platform that turns podcast listeners into subscribers and customers, built around two tiers:

• Free interactive checklists — 13 step-by-step guides across separation, family law, money, parenting and safety. Australian-state-aware where the law differs (Victoria vs New South Wales, and so on). Each one is gated behind a single email, so every guide grows Rachel's list.
• Paid courses — 15 deeper courses, sold one-off or by subscription, with Stripe checkout embedded on the site. No redirect, and people can buy as a guest before they make an account.
• Crisis resources — helplines on every page, never behind a sign-up. Safety is never gated.
• Partner directory — vetted lawyers, brokers and advisers, each with an offer for listeners.
• Self-serve admin — Rachel publishes content, sets her own prices, and exports her subscriber list herself. Passwordless, one-time-code sign-in throughout.

We designed for desktop and mobile, in a soft, warm palette with plenty of breathing room. It had to feel safe the moment someone opened it.

The decisions that shaped it

Free guides are the funnel, not a walled garden. Give real help, capture an email, follow up. Every checklist feeds one subscriber database Rachel can act on.

Safety is never gated. Crisis numbers sit on every page, including the free teasers — never a login between a woman in danger and a phone number.

Prices live in the app, not in Stripe. Rachel changes course and subscription pricing from the admin panel; checkout reads it straight from the database, so she never touches a Stripe dashboard.

An admin portal that makes Rachel independent. Content, pricing and subscribers are all self-serve. The fastest way for an MVP to quietly die is to depend on the studio for every update — her own CMS means the app keeps living after we step back.

Building in public

We're documenting the whole build on YouTube and LinkedIn, start to finish — the giveaway, the discovery work, the design and the development. Running it this way is deliberate: people can watch how we actually think and handle the messy parts, which tells them more than any pitch could.

Where it stands

The free-guide funnel, live Stripe checkout and the self-serve admin are built. We're finishing the platform in collaboration with Rachel ahead of launch.