Publishers on Ghost
Independent and professional publications that want their site to work their way: structure, navigation, membership, and the tooling behind the writing. I run a Ghost publication myself, so I know the territory from the inside.
Independent product design & build
The right product, the right way.
I design and build digital products end to end, with the judgment that comes from a career in product leadership.
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What I do
I’m a product builder. I work with you to define the product, design it, and build it into something people rely on.
Who it’s for
Founders who need a first version
An idea and a reason to test it, but no team yet. A working first version to put in front of customers or investors.
Product & innovation teams
A tested prototype in weeks: needs-finding, a working build, and what users actually did with it.
Case study
Road & Reason
An automotive publication on Ghost I conceived, designed, built, and run.
For much of my career, my job as a product leader was to say no a lot. Engineering bandwidth was a scarce resource, and good product management meant protecting it—ruthless prioritization, careful specs, and a roadmap where too many good ideas got parked in “later,” which often meant “never.”
I started Road & Reason in part to learn what building a business looks like in the age of AI. Even so, the old instincts came with me. I wanted a pipeline that turns Notion content into Ghost drafts ready for me to publish, with formatting, images, tagging, duplicate prevention, and status sync handled automatically. My first instinct was to file it as a distant roadmap item. Then I caught myself: with Claude Code, I had an initial workable version running in an afternoon.
From there I improved it as I used it, adding new post types and a Monthly Read newsletter that combines a synthesis with multiple posts. When a job stalled silently, I made sure the next failure couldn’t go unnoticed.
Road & Reason now runs with the kind of care solo projects rarely get: drafts are checked before they go live, and when something breaks, it recovers or tells me.
When almost anything can be built, the hard question is what’s worth building. It turns out years of deciding what not to build are good training for answering it.
Content model
Organized around big questions
Instead of a date-sorted feed, the archive is built around the strategic big questions relevant to each brand, so every piece has a place and a reason to exist.
Evidence trail
Claims you can check
Analysis is tied back to the evidence behind it, so readers can see how a conclusion was reached, not just what it is.
ROAD & REASON publishing pipeline
One-button Notion to Ghost, run like a production system
Claude
Screen
Hundreds of news and review articles per day, filtered against my content strategy
Me
Curate
Sorted in Notion; I pick the strongest and trigger a post from each
Me
Write
In Notion, starting from the linked sources; one button sends it on
Automated
Prepare
Formatting, images, tags, duplicate check
Automated
Stage
Ghost draft
Me
Publish
In Ghost Admin
↺ Status syncs back to Notion, and every post stays connected to its source articles
Staging environment
Health checks
Failure alerts
Automatic recovery
How engagements work
01
Fixed scope
We agree on what’s being made and what it costs before work starts, so there are no surprises later.
02
Built and tested
Working software, in staging first, checked against how it will actually be used.
03
Clean hand-off
Code, documentation, and access are yours. Staying involved is an option, not a dependency.
Background
My career has run on two tracks. One is product and innovation leadership, including First Data’s Innovation Lab and ADP, leading products used by millions. The other is building for the web, from online proofing at Hobsons to e-commerce and coverage mapping for a wireless carrier. The two converged at Road & Reason, where AI tools let me lead the product and build it myself.
After years of describing products for others to build, making them myself is the most energizing work of my career, and it means what we decide together is what actually ships.
Selected work
Led the research that identified small-business loyalty as First Data’s opportunity, and personally identified Perka as the acquisition candidate; First Data bought it and entered the market
Redirected ADP’s Health Compliance redesign around what clients needed to act on, their penalty exposure in dollars; the improved tools more than doubled the client accounts each service associate could manage
Led the consumer launch of the Google Prepaid Card, the first virtual prepaid card in Google Wallet
Designed and delivered employee self-service for more than 2.5 million workers at Walmart, 7-Eleven, and Burger King, and played a central role in bringing it to life at Walmart, down to pay stubs printed on repurposed payment terminals
Led research, design, and development of the Money Network app: 600,000+ active users and an NPS of 64 at launch
Directed the redesign of ADP’s tax-credit screening, which grew to handle 30+ million screenings a year
Mentored Atlanta school teams in design thinking through the K12 Design Challenge, a collaboration with Stanford’s d.school
Have an idea?
Tell me what you’re working on, an idea or a problem. The first conversation is free, and you’ll come away with my read on what’s worth building first, directions you could take it, and how I’d approach building it, whether or not we work together.
hello@scottfrancis.com