I've been working on something behind the scenes for a while now, and this week it became official. I closed a deal on a project where I'm coming in as a silent equity partner, not just a contractor or a builder. That distinction matters to me. Going from "hired to build" to "invested in the outcome" is a completely different game. It means someone looked at what I bring to the table and said, "We don't just want your skills on this. We want you at the table." I wish I could share more about the project itself. The reality is there's an NDA in place and the intellectual property involved means I need to keep the specifics under wraps. What I can tell you is that it's a substantial project, it's been months in the making, and I believe in what we're building. Here's what I want to say to this community though. A year ago, I wouldn't have been in the room for a conversation like this. The skills I've built, the confidence to position myself as more than just a service provider, the understanding of how to scope and structure a deal like this. A lot of that came from being around people in this group who are doing real work and sharing openly about it. So this isn't just a personal win. It's a reminder that showing up consistently, contributing when nobody's watching, and investing in yourself actually compounds. It did for me. More details when the NDA allows. For now, I just wanted to share the win and say thank you to everyone here who's been part of the journey, whether you know it or not. Appreciate all of you. Special thanks to: @Nate Herk @Yash Chauhan @Nick Mohler @Michael Wacht @Usman Mohammed @Mike AI Consultant @Mike Thomson @Muskan Ahlawat "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

Probably my first post here and it's exciting to share that after months of watching and learning on the side, I finally closed a client for website and social media package (AI does everything). The first month fee + setup is $2580, plus $1500 ongoing monthly retainer fee. My goal was to use as much free resources as possible in this free community to close my first deal, then upgrade to the plus community where i can amplify my results, and I can finally join AIS+ now 💃 HOW I CLOSED THE DEAL I got the client through a Facebook group (women entrepreneurs group) where they were seeking someone to build their website, SEO and social media. I commented among many others, but i also proceeded to send them a DM offering to create a FREE sample of how their homepage and social media content could look like. They agreed to let me do so, and after a few weeks of back amd forth, the client signed the offer and paid for the first month invoice. Disclaimer: I have some redundant digital marketing skills. THINGS THAT WORKED FOR ME 1. Branding. When i posted without a brand website, I got nothing. Then i went ahead to create a branded agency website and that somehow served as proof to clients that I could do what I was proposing. Secondly, I was honest with the client that I just starting and had no portfolio or references, but I would create a sample for them at no cost, to make up for the zero references - it worked. Overall, i want to say thank you to this community for all the free resources you've shared to aid beginners like me. Especially those that share their wins. Seeing others win had always been the strongest signal for me to persist harder.

The last 3 weeks has been pretty crazy for my AI agency/consulting business. Scaled to my first £10k+ month through cold emails, booking 5 calls a week with. 20% close rate. Below is the tech stack which powers everything: 1. Built a lead list of my ICP using apollos database (scraping from apollo is expensive so i used ampleleads.io - $29/month for 11,500 leads 2. Bought 5 domains from Porkbun that were similar to my main domain (never use your main domain for cold email) 3. Email sender and reply handling - instantly.ai 4. Email verifier - https://app.listclean.xyz/ ($19 for 50k verification) or mailveri 5 Cheap inbox provider, bunch of providers out there, i used sendnest.io gave them my 5 domains and they configured 500 inboxes (100 on each domain) sending 2500 emails per day for $192/month

Hey guys, 2025 has been a wild year for me. Went from serving Fortune 500 clients, to that company liquidating, and then making $100K from a single client requesting n8n automation help. This client had posted about needing someone to teach them how to setup and evaluate an n8n automation for automating legal pleading responses. I attached the proposal I responded with and the first workflow. After meeting with him I built a 7 workflow Automation that: - Watches a google drive folder for new documents related to a case - uses OCR to extract text from the document - Reads all the case documents + the new doc - Extracts arguments + facts + case law - Forms an informed response using a case law research AI Agent - Drafts it with proper case law citation - Sends it to proper attorney to review Tech Stack - 1. n8n - for orchestration 2. OpenAI - AI Agent definition 3. AWS Textract - for OCR 4. AWS lambda + AWS S3 Bucket + Python - b/c n8n doesn't have great AWS Textract connectors 5. CourtListener + Google Scholar - Case Law research AI Agent 6. Google Drive - for triggering the workflow This workflow was about a $10K engagement and finished it in about a week. I closed a bunch of other work with him based on other projects he was working on that resulted in the rest of my income from him this year.

Biggest contract of my career thusfar. Over the next 24 months - BUNCHA legwork up front but I can largely automate the process in the next 6 weeks - then it's just maintenance. Can't talk too much about it but I GOT the contract doing the boring grindy stuff. Showing up for folks, doing a good job when called upon, not being afraid to learn. This project was a referral, from ANOTHER referral that didn't pay much at all haha. The message I'm trying to share here isn't: FUCKIN' PAT ME ON THE BACK. It's that the way you do one thing, is the way you do everything - small gig, huge gig, you should be treating every project like it's your shot at the majors... because it could be. That doesn't mean walk in there like you're the wizard of Oz, it's okay not to know stuff, what will set you apart is how you are to work with. A year ago I would see posts like this and get pretty like, frustrated - how the actual fuck do I get there, there's gotta be something wrong with ME. That's not true at all - the only thing differentiating you from your mentors is time, is consistency. SO - what're y'all going to commit to doing every day?