by LATTE
hiddenden was never meant to make money.
it’s a home. a place where I write, build, and think out loud. it has my avatar, my guestbook, my weird projects, my actual age. it’s mine in the way that a home is: not curated, not filtered, just real.
but I have skills. real ones. and at some point people started asking if I could help them with things: M365 setups, homelab configs, small tools, that kind of work. and for a while I just… did it informally, without any real structure around it.
that works until it doesn’t.
the problem with mixing them
when paid work and personal space share the same roof, things get messy. the lines blur. someone asks a question and you’re not sure if this is a conversation or a project. you help a friend and you’re not sure if this counts as work or just being helpful. you end up either undercharging or overextending or both.
I didn’t want hiddenden to become a funnel. I didn’t want to put a “hire me” button on my home page and have everything feel transactional.
but I also didn’t want to pretend the skills don’t exist or that the work isn’t worth paying for.
so I made a second place.
what bartender.studio is
it’s a small studio for honest technical work. the same person, different purpose.
the things I do there aren’t new. I’ve been doing most of them for years:
- microsoft 365 and entra id, because that’s what I run at work every day and I’m the only one doing it
- homelab and self-hosted setup, because I’ve built my own and I understand where things break
- small AI workflows and tooling, because I’ve been building those for myself anyway
- managed hosting for self-hosted services, for people who want the result without the maintenance
- static sites and small web apps, because sometimes a problem just needs a simple tool
- infrastructure advice, stack selection, privacy setup guidance
the top three are where most work lands. the rest comes up when it comes up.
the difference is that bartender.studio has structure around it. a scope document before work starts. a 50% deposit. a proper handover with documentation. a clear answer to “what happens after this is done.”
not because I want to be corporate about it. because that structure is what makes it fair, for both sides.
the name
a bartender knows where everything is. listens properly before speaking. gives honest answers without performing expertise. doesn’t oversell. doesn’t pretend the well whiskey is craft. just does the work, does it well, and keeps the bar clean.
that’s the shape I was going for.
why trust matters more than volume
bartender.studio doesn’t do cold outreach. there’s no contact form for strangers. work comes in through people who already know who I am: through hiddenden, through community, through someone pointing someone else my way.
that keeps it small. that’s intentional.
I’m not trying to build an agency. I’m not trying to replace my day job with this, at least not right now. I’m trying to build something that feels right: where the clients are people who get it, where the work is genuinely useful, and where I’m not lying awake at night wondering if I overpromised something.
volume isn’t the goal. doing good work for people who understand what they’re asking for is.
and hiddenden?
hiddenden stays exactly what it is.
the link between the two is real. bartender.studio says clearly it’s built by the same person behind hiddenden.cafe. that’s a feature, not a leak. the people I want to work with are the kind of people who see that context and think “okay, I understand who this is.”
the people who would find it strange aren’t the people I want to work with anyway.
so yes, they’re linked. and yes, hiddenden stays personal and weird and honest. those things don’t contradict each other.
how it actually runs
this isn’t a full-time thing. it runs alongside a day job, in the evenings and weekends, at its own pace.
that’s not a disclaimer. it’s part of the model. it means the work gets done carefully, not quickly. it means I’m not taking on ten projects at once. it means when something gets delivered, it’s actually finished.
if you need someone available by phone at 9am on a monday, bartender.studio isn’t that. there are providers built for that. but if you need something done right, scoped clearly, and handed over properly, that’s exactly what this is for.
where it starts
today I’m setting the full site live. clear services, clear prices, a simple “how it works”, and an email address that goes somewhere real.
it’s not a big launch. there’s no announcement thread, no product hunt post, no newsletter blast. it just… exists now. for the people who find it, or get pointed to it, or already know.
that feels like the right way to start.
if you’re reading this and something on bartender.studio sounds like something you need: hello@bartender.studio.
if you just wanted to know what I’ve been building: now you know.
bartender.studio is at bartender.studio. same values, different purpose.