Three days to build a ballet website

Jackson Dean

2 min read

My fiancée is a professional ballerina who teaches private lessons. She had room for more students, but most people found her through word of mouth. I wanted people searching for lessons to have a way to find her.

I'd been experimenting with Claude Code for months when I saw a post by James Dickerson, who goes by the Boring Marketer on Twitter. He'd used it to build a website for Diesel Dudes, helping someone in his life who needed one. I could imagine doing the same, and I had someone in mind.

In August 2025, I started building Valle Ballet. Three days later, it was live.

Building Valle Ballet

The site was for people searching for private ballet lessons in San Diego. I used Claude Code to build it in Astro, a framework for websites, with pages for the services and locations and a way to get in touch.

Seeing the pages work on the first go was rewarding enough to keep me at it. One evening, I stayed up after dinner setting up the email forms. Eventually I connected the inquiries to Slack, so I'd know when someone wrote in.

Valle Ballet’s current homepage, with private lessons and trial bookings.
Valle Ballet’s current homepage, with private lessons and trial bookings.

Trying it for a client

I was enjoying the work and wanted to try it again. That same August, I started a website for Born Simple, a food brand I'd worked with as a media buyer.

They had a Squarespace site I didn't think was very good. Building websites wasn't what they'd known me for, but after Valle Ballet I was willing to try making them a new one.

For Born Simple, the site needed to answer a different set of questions. What was in each meal? How did you prepare it? Where could you buy it? I built product pages, nutrition information, recipes, and retailer links. I was still figuring things out as I went, now on a client's site.

Born Simple’s current homepage, introducing the meals and where to buy them.
Born Simple’s current homepage, introducing the meals and where to buy them.

The first booking took longer

The ballet site was quick to build. Getting a student through it took longer.

For weeks, nothing happened. With the Slack notifications set up, I more or less forgot about it. Then the inquiries began. Five people reached out without booking; the sixth became her first client through the site.

At the start of that lesson, the student wouldn't let go of her dad's hand. By the end of the hour, she didn't want to leave.

By the time I shared the story in James's community, another lesson from the website was scheduled. In January 2026, he posted my message on Twitter. A few months earlier, his example had helped me decide to try building a site. Now he was sharing mine.