Ric Smolenski

Instructional designer, course creator, and recovering academic.

I'm Ric. After 25 years in education, I now build online courses, create learning experiences, and write about the solopreneur journey. I live in Phoenix, Arizona with my family.

Why I Left Cloudflare Workers

Migrating Notary Atlas from Cloudflare Workers + D1 to Bunny Magic Containers — and why the edge runtime wasn't worth the tradeoffs for a Next.js app.

Why I Self-Host My Notes on a NAS

Why I moved from cloud note apps to self-hosted SiYuan Note on a Synology NAS, the privacy and control benefits, and the setup considerations.

150 Blog Posts With an AI Content Workflow

How to build an AI content workflow that generates, optimizes, and publishes SEO blog posts at scale — with human quality control at every step.

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What I Do

Former Dean turned instructional designer and online course creator. I help coaches and consultants turn their expertise into courses people actually finish.

25 years in education and training. Built software, wrote curricula, and trained 39,000+ professionals across all 50 states.

Based in Phoenix, Arizona

Read more about me