A Day in the Life of Rache De Luna
Location: Manila, Philippines
Started using Squarespace: 2014
Title: Founder, Squarestylist
Rache De Luna hasn’t just built a successful global business. She’s built a life she actually wants to live. As the founder of Squarestylist, Rache teaches designers around the world how to push the limits of Squarespace using custom code. She also creates and sells Squarespace plugins and templates while maintaining design retainer clients across Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines.
Despite her massive reach, Rache refuses to let the work take over. Instead, she fiercely protects her time, architecting her entire workday around her son’s school schedule so she never misses a family lunch or bedtime story. This approach gives her the freedom to pour her best energy into projects and tasks that truly fill her cup. For Rache, that means working directly with her students to troubleshoot problems or learn new skills.
By designing a schedule with zero rush and plenty of room for mid-day naps, Rache proves that you can run a thriving digital empire while remaining completely connected to your craft.
Check out a day in Rache’s life and see her top advice for web designers.
Rache’s schedule
6:30 AM: I wake up and get us both ready for the day—my son’s school bag, his uniform, all the little morning things. My husband and I made a commitment early on: we bring our son to school and pick him up ourselves, every single day. It’s not a chore that we split. It’s actually something we both look forward to.
7:30 AM: My husband and I bring our son to school together. It’s only about a five minute drive away. We always make sure to give him a big hug and remind him to enjoy his day.
7:45 AM: Breakfast with my husband. I’m a creature of habit here—it’s almost always pandesal and a decaf iced mocha. This quiet window before work starts is one of the best parts of my morning.
8:30 AM: I open up my Superhuman app and sort through my inbox. What I love about the app is that I can “remind” myself about emails that aren’t urgent right now so everything stays organized without anything falling through the cracks. I personally answer every single email: questions from potential students assessing whether Standout Squarespace is right for them, responding to messages from potential design clients, or inquiries for my templates and plugins. It’s important to me that the person on the other end always hears directly from me.
9:30 AM: This is my favorite part of the day. I head into our Standout Squarespace community to answer student questions. Today alone, the range is wide. One student needs help styling our Font Sampler technique (a feature that lets visitors live-preview different fonts) so it matches her brand perfectly. Another is troubleshooting why our CSS-based technique to create tables in Squarespace isn’t rendering correctly on her particular site. And a third is asking how to explain the results of Google PageSpeed Insights to her client and what adjustments to prioritize. I love this work because every question is a teaching opportunity. I don’t just give the answer. I try to walk through the thinking, typically using a video walkthrough so they can solve similar problems on their own next time. This is the part of running an education business that I love doing myself.
11:00 AM: A quick check-in with my design retainer clients. I remind them of our upcoming design intensive for the month and ask them to prepare the full list of website, blog, and brand asset updates they need so I can plan accordingly when I’ll tackle their requests in a single focused day.
11:15 AM: Customer support for my digital products. A customer who purchased my Palma Squarespace Template needs it installed on her existing site. I use the Saved Pages feature to complete the full install in about thirty minutes. Then I jump to plugin support—a couple of customers need quick CSS tweaks for my Minimal Carousel and Stylish Vertical Tabs plugins to better match their brand. I send over custom code snippets.
12:00 PM: I take a nap. This might surprise people, but napping is one of the most important parts of my workflow. Working the hours that I do (mornings and evenings built around my son’s schedule) means I need to recharge intentionally. A 30-minute to one-hour nap in the middle of the day keeps me sharp and creative for the evening work session ahead.
1:30 PM: I start getting ready to pick up my son from school. The walk there is about fifteen minutes and honestly doubles as my daily exercise.
2:30 PM: My son’s home time! The three of us (my husband, my son, and I) walk home together.
3:00 PM: Late lunch with my family. After we eat, the rest of the afternoon belongs to my son— homework, catching up on his day, getting things prepped for tomorrow. This is the whole reason I designed my schedule the way I did, so I can be completely present during his waking hours.
7:00 PM: Dinner as a family.
7:45 PM: We watch a short educational show together before bedtime. Lately it’s been a dinosaur show—my son is obsessed. By 8:00 PM, I’m putting him to sleep.
8:30 PM: Once my son’s asleep, I freshen up and make myself a cup of hot crème caramel tea. My evening session begins with learning and exploration time: about an hour watching something that feeds my curiosity. Sometimes it’s a YouTube deep-dive, other times an article from a creative I admire. I also work on special personal projects to apply what I just learned. Lately, I’ve been drawn to exploring AI, especially in development. Tonight I’m working on a Discovery Tool I built that helps anyone describe a feature they have in mind and find out whether it’s possible in Squarespace. It searches through our workshop library and points them to the right resource in Standout Squarespace. It’s meant to become useful for both my current students and for prospective ones who want to see just how much is possible on the platform before they join.
9:00 PM: I check Slack to touch base with my team. We’re all based in the Philippines, but we work completely asynchronously—no rush, no pressure. I truly believe that’s when creativity sparks. Our central hub is in Notion, where we keep our content calendar, comments, and strategy for everything: blog posts, social media, YouTube videos, and upcoming campaigns for Standout Squarespace.
9:30 PM: I check the Squarespace Circle Forum for any important updates, then head back into our Standout Squarespace community for a second round of student questions. Tonight, one student is looking for inspiration on unique portfolio layouts. Another is asking how to approach the redesign of an existing Squarespace website while preserving SEO and minimizing downtime; a question that’s as much about strategy as it is about code. For quick troubleshooting or code snippets, I use Savvy, my AI-powered code assistant for Squarespace. This is also when I create new code techniques that I share in my community. My students have been wanting an easier way to present detailed information in a compact space, so tonight I’m building a slide-out panel for Squarespace to help present more information upon clicking any link.
11:00 PM: My team has already prepared our content for the day, so I just repurpose that single piece across Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Most of our video content is filmed ahead of time, typically during my son’s school breaks. Then I pull out my physical planner and write down tomorrow’s to-do list by hand. There’s something about pen and paper that makes the next day feel a little more considered.
11:30 PM: Lights out. It’s time for a restful sleep.
Rache's top advice for web designers
Design your work around your life, not the other way around. My schedule looks unconventional on paper—I work when my son is at school or asleep. But it means I never miss a school drop-off, a family lunch, or a bedtime story. Your business should support the life you want to live. Build your schedule around your non-negotiables first, and let everything else fill in around them.
Embrace the creative power of no rush. My team works asynchronously. There are no urgent Slack pings, no pressure to respond immediately. I’ve found that giving people space—including myself—is when the best ideas surface. Creativity doesn’t thrive under pressure. It thrives when you trust the process and give it room to breathe.
Identify the work that you love, and keep doing it yourself. Every business has tasks you could hand off and tasks that lose something when you do. For me, it’s answering student questions. I could delegate community support, but problem-solving together with my students is the part I love most. I don’t just share the answer; I walk through the thinking so they can work through similar problems on their own next time. For you, it might be client calls, or the design work itself, or writing. Whatever it is, protect it. Delegate the rest if possible.
Keep learning and follow your curiosity. I’m a self-taught developer. I discovered Squarespace in 2014 and taught myself to code because I wanted to push what was possible. That same curiosity now has me exploring new tools to improve how I work and what I can offer my students. The landscape will keep shifting; the designers who thrive are the ones who stay open to learning.
Watch Rache’s session at Circle Day 2025.
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