SmartGuy
One platform, two very different audiences - self-discovery content for consumers and a paid business network for professionals - sharing a single backend without getting in each other's way.
Client Challenge
SmartGuy runs a faith-and-wisdom content platform for consumers built around self-assessments, alongside a US business network where professionals pay for listing slots and earn referral commissions. Consumers taking assessments and browsing content, and professionals managing paid business listings, needed distinct signup, verification, and dashboard paths on the same platform. Listings had to support recurring paid slots, trial and referral-discount packages, and affiliate commissions rather than a flat one-time fee. Self, friends-family, and idol-match assessments needed to drive genuinely personalized videos, tasks, and readings, and essential, inspirational, and campaign emails all needed queuing, scheduled sending, and proper unsubscribe handling at scale.
Objectives
- Run two audiences - consumers and professionals - on one shared data model without either flow interfering with the other.
- Turn business listings into a real recurring-revenue product with trial and referral-discount packages.
- Make personalization follow from real assessment data, and put email infrastructure behind proper queuing and unsubscribe handling.
Solution Design
We built role-separated flows on one shared backend: NestJS and MongoDB, with a Next.js 15 web app for assessments, the video library, the business network, and professional dashboards.
Mini/full self-assessments, friends-family questionnaires, and idol-match results feed a recommendation layer that surfaces trait-matched videos, tasks, movies, and readings. Authorize.Net ARB handles monthly and annual listing-slot subscriptions, including trial and referral-discount packages, with card data posted directly to the API rather than through Stripe.js. Inspirational and campaign emails run through cron-driven queues with proper unsubscribe tokens, kept separate from transactional essentials like verification and password reset.
Implementation Process
Phase 1: Discovery & Roles
Mapped consumer, professional, and admin journeys against one shared data model; designed separate signup paths with JWT + roles and Google OAuth.
Phase 2: Backend & Billing
Built NestJS + MongoDB, Authorize.Net ARB billing, SES/Twilio verification, and email queues.
Phase 3: Web App & Launch
Shipped Next.js assessments, video library, business network, and professional dashboards, with cron-driven email queues and an admin console.
Results & Business Outcomes
Two Businesses, One Foundation
A content and self-discovery product for consumers and a subscription business network for professionals each get their own signup, verification, and dashboard, sharing one backend and admin console.
Automated Recurring Revenue
Professionals list, pay for, and manage business slots with recurring billing and referral commissions handled automatically, no manual invoicing required.
Technology Stack
System Architecture Flow
Consumer and professional journeys on one shared data model.
Self, friends-family, and idol-match questionnaires.
Trait-matched videos, tasks, movies, and readings.
Recurring slot subscriptions via Authorize.Net ARB.
Cron-driven sends with proper unsubscribe handling.
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