FM Digital Retail floors to SaaS platforms.
Business first. Build second.
Most people who can build don't understand business. Most business people can't build. This is the story of how those two worlds came together, with AI as the accelerant that collapsed the timeline.
Senior retail management. Running teams, reading numbers, understanding customers.
Before the page builder, before the code, before the platforms. I spent years in senior management in retail. That meant managing teams, understanding margins, tracking what moved and what didn't, and constantly reading customer behaviour to make better calls. Retail at a senior level teaches you something that no dev bootcamp touches: how businesses actually work. What drives a conversion. Why a customer leaves. How to look at a number and know what it's telling you about operations. That foundation didn't go anywhere. It went into every product I've built since.
Team leadership · Ops · Business metrics · Customer behaviour · P&L thinkingElementor and SEO: learning how the web actually works
I didn't start with code. I started with Elementor, dragging and dropping components, watching how layouts respond, figuring out what a section, a column, a widget actually meant under the hood. At the same time I was deep in SEO courses: how search engines crawl, how structure matters, why metadata and content architecture are everything. That combination: visual builder + search fundamentals, gave me something most developers skip: I understood the why behind the markup before I ever wrote it.
Elementor · WordPress · SEO · FoundationsDiscovered AI. Everything changed.
Someone introduced me to Gemini. I started using it to explain what Elementor was generating, the CSS it was writing, the PHP it was hooking into. Suddenly the gap between "I can build with a drag-and-drop tool" and "I understand the actual code" collapsed. AI didn't replace the learning. It compressed it. I could write a component, get it explained, fix it, iterate, in the time it used to take just to find the right Stack Overflow answer. I started using more tools. More AI in the loop. More speed.
Gemini · AI-assisted dev · HTML · CSS · PHPLaunched Find My Nursery
Instead of building another practice project, I built something real. A full nursery and early childhood directory for South Africa: custom WordPress theme (no Elementor), GeoDirectory, Google Maps API, PayFast payment integration, POPIA compliance. AI in the workflow the whole time: not doing the work for me, but helping me ship faster than someone two years into a CS degree would have. It's now the largest ECD directory in the country.
1,750+ schools · 9 provinces · AI-assisted buildBuilt my own resume. Landed my first role in marketing.
I didn't use a template. I designed and hand-coded my own CV, because by that point, I could. That resume, built on the foundation of Elementor, SEO, and AI-accelerated development, got me my first marketing position. Under a year from opening a page builder for the first time to employed in the industry.
First marketing role · Self-coded CV · Under 12 monthsRunning FM Digital Solutions. Shipping platforms.
The page builder is long gone. Custom PHP, Node.js REST APIs, two-sided SaaS, Claude MCP integrations. AI is still in the workflow, not as a shortcut, but as the tool that lets a one-person studio move at the pace of a full team. That's the model. That's what FM Digital Solutions is built on.
Founder · Full-stack · AI-native · FM Digital Solutions