Last Saturday I spent about 12 hours building this offer from scratch. Research, positioning, site, the whole thing. The original version was aimed at youth empowerment non-profits — organisations doing work that aligns with the Finn Wardman World Explorer Fund. That felt right. One life, one mission.
So I spent 3 or 4 days prospecting into that space. Got 2 responses. Both said the same thing: no budget.
Fair enough. I'm not going to beat a dead horse. Non-profits are mission-aligned but cash-strapped by design. I've kept them in the offer at a permanent 50% — that stays, because the mission stays — but I pivoted the primary focus back to startups. This is my actual domain. Twenty years in software. Thousands of relevant contacts in my network. I know how founders think because I've been one for most of my adult life.
The pivot took about a day to accept emotionally and about 20 minutes to execute practically.
Prospect 1
He's a mate. I'm not going to pretend otherwise — warm network is how every business starts, and anyone telling you their first client was a cold stranger is either lying or extremely lucky.
On a call, he told me his two biggest pain points. First: speed to leads. His team is too slow responding to inbound enquiries and he's losing deals in the gap. Second: dead leads sitting in the CRM that nobody is following up on. Both are revenue problems with clear AI ops solutions.
He offered me a cut of the sales my work generates. I thought about it and said no. The attribution problem is too messy — how do we ever agree on which closed deal was because of the AI layer versus his sales team? That conversation ends friendships.
Instead I proposed this: I build the whole thing for free. I own the AI layer — I can see it, maintain it, tweak it without needing to knock on someone's door and ask for access. Once deals start closing and the value is obvious, we agree on a monthly fee to keep the system running. I'm not a freelancer who builds something and disappears. I'm the person who built it and stays responsible for it.
This structure came directly from listening to a lot of Hormozi. Deliver insane value first. Figure out the money second. The sequence matters.
Why this works for me too
I want to own AI layers, not deliver one-off projects. A portfolio of maintained systems across 5 or 6 clients is a real business. A series of completed projects is just freelancing with extra steps.
This is Day 1. One prospect, one conversation, the architecture of the offer starting to take actual shape.
Day 1 scoreboard
Prospects in conversation: 1. Active clients: 0. Revenue: $0.
Day 2 tomorrow.