Hey, I'm Zach. 👋
Two decades in sales.
Three years in marketing.
A lifelong builder.
I'm an operational leader who uses modern AI to turn years of front-line business experience into functional, problem-solving tools.
The short version
I'm not a software engineer with a CS degree and 10 years of commits. I'm a people-first operator who spent two decades earning trust on the sales floor — and now I build tools that make my own life easier.
The sales floor
Started on the frontline at an RV dealership — learning to listen, solve problems on the spot, and earn trust one conversation at a time. Nearly two decades with the same company taught me that loyalty and showing up matter more than any résumé bullet.
Marketing Director
Moved into a self-taught Marketing Director role across multiple locations. Ran campaigns, shot commercials, and built systems.
AI-empowered builder
Discovered that modern AI coding tools could finally let me build the software I'd always wished I had. Not by becoming a traditional engineer overnight — but by pairing twenty years of operational instinct with tools that meet me where I am.
When I'm not building
The stuff that keeps me grounded and makes the work worth doing.
What I've built
Real tools born from real frustrations — on the sales floor, in the marketing office, and around the dinner table.
Gather
Family gatherings without group-text chaos
Coordinating family dinners meant endless group texts, scattered RSVPs, and no single place to see who was coming, what they were bringing, or when to send reminders.
A mobile app built with React Native (Expo) and Firebase where families create events, track RSVPs and headcount, assign dishes, and send push notifications — all wrapped in a warm 'Sunday Roast' design theme.
Holiday meals and Sunday dinners feel less chaotic: everyone sees the same event details, knows what they’re bringing, and gets gentle reminders right on their phone.
How to ship a full mobile MVP with Expo, phone-number auth, Firestore real-time sync, and a coherent design system — plus how much great UX matters when you’re designing for busy, non-technical family members.
RV Finance Calculator
Deal math, anywhere
Sale and Finance managers needed quick, accurate finance estimates on the lot or at a RV show,not back at a desk with a spreadsheet.
A mobile-first calculator that handles RV-specific financing: trade values, down payments, tax, and monthly estimates in seconds.
Sales staff could confidently walk customers through numbers on the spot, cutting deal time and building trust faster.
How to think about UX from the perspective of someone standing in a parking lot with a customer — not sitting at a desk.
ForeCast Golf
Live outing scoring + leaderboard
For a small group outing, we needed a dead-simple way to track scores without paper cards, group texts, or one person doing math for everyone.
A real-time web app for a Fox Hollow Golf Course outing: predefined game slots, nickname signup, tee selection with yardages, quick score entry, and a combined live leaderboard across all groups (plus a demo mode to explore without saving data).
Everyone stayed on the same page during the round — scores updated instantly, players could check their scorecard anytime, and editing past holes was painless on mobile.
Firebase/Firestore real-time data patterns, mobile-first UX for fast input, and how details like tee/yardage context and dark mode make an event app feel polished.
RV-Sale Flyer Generator
Event flyers in minutes, not hours
Creating sale event flyers for multiple locations meant hours in design tools for every campaign.
A templated flyer generator where the marketing inputs event details and gets print-ready, branded PDFs instantly.
What used to take a week or more for a RV show now takes minutes.
PDF generation, template systems, scraping websites, scripts and automations and how to build internal tools that people adopt because they're genuinely easier than the old way.
QR Code Generator
Branded codes, no subscriptions
Every QR code tool wanted a monthly subscription for basic branding and tracking.
A straightforward QR code generator with custom colors, logo embedding, campaign tracking, batch building and download options — no account needed.
Used across print materials, event signage, and vehicle displays at every location.
QR encoding standards, SVG generation, and that 'build vs. buy' sometimes has an obvious answer when the buy option is overpriced.
The creative side
As Marketing Director, I got behind the camera, wrote the scripts, and made sure every commercial felt like us. I also experiment with AI video tools — prompts, generative clips, and editing — to see how they fit into the creative process.
Mile High RV Show
Event spot for the Mile High RV Show — high-energy, customer-facing spot designed to drive traffic and position the show as the destination for RV buyers.
Editor, videographer, copywriter, designer, and audio. Music via Suno; voice and sound design with ElevenLabs and related tools.
Ran across digital, social, and in-show displays to support one of the key annual events.
WRV Model Year Closeout
Campaign spot built around model-year closeout urgency — clear messaging without feeling pushy, built for multi-location use.
Editor, videographer, copywriter, designer, and audio. Music via Suno; voice and sound with ElevenLabs and related tools.
Supported sales teams with a consistent, on-brand spot for the closeout window.
Yeti
Experimental short created with AI video tools — exploring how generative video can support concepting and storytelling.
Concept, prompts, and edit. Nano Bana Pro, Veo 3, and Google Flow.
Personal experiment in AI-generated video; part of learning how new tools fit into the creative process.
Behind the scenes
Not every tool has a UI. These are the automations and workflows that quietly saved hours every week.
Analytics Monthly Emailer
Leadership needed monthly marketing analytics, but pulling and formatting the data was a manual, error-prone slog that ate half a day every month.
Built an automated pipeline that pulls analytics from multiple sources, formats them into a clean, branded email report, and sends it on schedule — no manual steps.
Half a day of tedious work eliminated every month. Leadership gets consistent, timely data they actually read.
Social Content Poster
Posting across multiple social channels for multiple locations meant logging into a dozen accounts and copy-pasting the same content with minor tweaks.
Created a tool that takes a single content brief, adapts it per platform and location, and schedules posts across all channels from one place.
Social publishing went from a scattered, hour-long task to a focused 10-minute workflow. Consistency went way up.
Custom GPTs & Internal Assistants
Team members kept asking the same operational questions — 'What's the process for X?' 'Where's the template for Y?' — and the answers lived in scattered docs.
Built custom GPT assistants trained on internal processes, templates, and FAQs so the team could get instant, accurate answers without hunting through shared drives.
Reduced repetitive questions to managers by a noticeable margin. New hires ramp up faster because the knowledge is always available.
What I'm learning right now
I'm always picking up new tools. Here are a few I'm digging into right now — I rotate these as my focus shifts.
n8n — Backend Automation Workflows
Moving beyond one-off scripts into connected, visual automation pipelines. The goal: make every repetitive business process self-running.
Next.js & React
Building and shipping this site and other web apps. Component-driven UI, server and client rendering, and keeping things fast and maintainable.
Cursor & AI-assisted development
Pairing with AI to go from idea to working code faster — without a traditional CS background. Learning how to prompt, review, and ship with modern tooling.
Let's connect
Got an idea, a question, or just want to jam on something?
I'm always up for a good conversation.
Or drop a line at support@shawdesignlabs.com