I cycled through three jobs in 90 days, that was until about 2 weeks ago. Each one felt wrong, for various reasons. The reason I started this direction is documented in the first post of this BIP. The misalignment was immediate and total.
I'm on ADT hormone therapy right now. Prostate cancer recurrence. The drugs are strong — they flip my emotional state like a light switch. One minute I'm flat, the next I'm manic. One minute I'm rational, the next I'm making decisions that scare the rational version of me. My wife says I'm a hot mess. I've got the emotional range of our four-year-old French Bulldog right now, he's cute but let's say, very emotional.
The weird thing is, I think these drugs are fuelling something real. Because on the other side of those three bad jobs, something clicked. And it's been the clearest thing I've articulated in a long time. Leaning in more to intuition, and doing things by feel. Being as open and vulnerable as possible, and being 100% transparent. This is not the person I was raised to be, or that I am. I'm in introvert that has posted on social media 3 times in the last 2 years.
One Life One Mission
I don't have time for a portfolio anymore. I don't have the bandwidth for side projects or "interesting opportunities." I've got one life, and I'm going to use it for one mission.
That mission is split two ways.
The first part is testventures.net — a productised AI ops service for early-stage startups and youth empowerment nonprofits. Flat rate. One request at a time. Unlimited requests. I take on 10-15 clients, max, and I run a lean team that delivers. No scope creep, no vendor relationship. Partnership or nothing.
The second part is the Finn Wardman World Explorer Fund — the thing I work on every single day, no exception. Right now that's writing, grant administration, and sending young people on transformative experiences. Adventures. Presence. The kind of work that reminds you why you're alive.
Everything else is noise. If it doesn't serve one of these two, I say no.
The Vipassana Reset as Proof of Concept
This past week I pulled together about 15,800 words of writing. Seven blog posts from raw journal notes, cleaned up over at least an hour of work each day, plus a landing page that I rewrote yesterday in two hours because it needed to sing. The thing that needed to sing was an offer I created for the Finn Fund, and I'm now testing it in the wild.
It's called the Vipassana Reset.
Here's the idea: I'm funding young adults — specifically, people aged 18 to 26 who have the guts to try something hard — to leave their home country and go on a transformative spiritual retreat. They spend 10 days in silence at a Vipassana meditation centre (India, Thailand, or Nepal or their place of interest). The retreat itself is free. After those 10 days, they stay for another week or two and explore whatever country they've chosen. It costs between $1,200 and $1,500 total. That's flight, accommodation, food, and the buffer. Not cheap for a young adult anywhere. Impossible for most.
But here's the thing: I'm not running a charity (it's actually more of an endowment fund). I'm running a test. And I believe — deeply, from lived experience — that a Vipassana retreat is one of the most important gifts a human being can give themselves. I did one in November 2023, eleven months after my son Finn died. I walked in broken. I walked out still broken, but with tools that have changed how I see everything. I haven't missed a day of meditation since. I quit news and media entirely. I learned how to be present in a way I didn't know was possible. So now I'm testing whether I can find young people who want that, fund them, and send them into the world slightly more awake than they were before.
That's the part of the mission. Just doing things that feel right. That's what I'm building testventures revenue toward.
How It Works (The Vipassana Reset)
A Vipassana retreat is 10 days of silence. You wake at 4am. You meditate for 12 hours. You eat two meals. No eye contact. No writing. No talking. No phone. The silence isn't punishment — it's the point. Your brain finally stops running from itself. By day four or five, something shifts. The noise quiets. You start to see what you've been avoiding. For me, that was grief. For others it's fear, or numbness, or the realisation that they've been living someone else's life. You sit with it. You observe it. And something changes.
After the retreat ends, you get your phone back. Your mind is the clearest it's been in years. That's when the second part begins: spend the next 7 to 14 days in a completely different country. Not to escape. To integrate. To see the world with a mind that's finally paying attention. To surf. To trek. To sit by a river and just watch things move. To have conversations that actually matter because you're finally present for them.
The package is one of a kind. I've looked. It doesn't exist anywhere else, and that feels fun and serves the creative side in me.
Running the Experiment
I'm running lead-generation ads in Kenya right now, targeting young adults aged 18 to 25. The ad spend per lead is $0.81. The target audience in Kenya for that age group is about 3 million people. I'm not expecting to fill this offer overnight. But I'm pretty confident that in 60 days, I'll find one or two young adults curious enough to try it.
My commitment: I'm funding the first person entirely from testventures revenue. That's $1,500 out of client work. I don't have clients yet — I've got two sales calls this week — but I'm making the commitment anyway. Because this is the mission. This is where testventures money goes.
My 21-year-old son, Somers, is doing one this year in Indonesia. He's taking me up on the offer, which means I get to watch him walk into silence and see what comes out the other side. I can't wait.
Why This Matters
I'm not building testventures to make money. I'm building it to fund the Finn Wardman World Explorer Fund and to survive, as well so that I never need to ask for donations and squirm to say that part of that donation is going to my salary. The agency is the vehicle. The fund is the mission. And this Vipassana Reset is an example of concrete expression of what I believe every young person deserves: the chance to step outside their life, sit with themselves, and come back changed.
That's one life. One mission. Everything else is a distraction.
If you know a young adult who might be interested — or if you're an organisation working with youth and you want to run your own version of this — get in touch. I'm just getting started.