Consulting Is the Bridge. Software Is the Destination.

That's the thesis I keep coming back to when I think about where Growth Medium is headed.

A strategic frame I'm using to make decisions about where my time goes, what work I take on, and what I'm building toward.

The honest version of this story

This isn't a polished retrospective. I'm not writing from the other side of a successful pivot, looking back and connecting the dots. I'm in the middle of it — figuring it out as I go. I'm making educated guesses and hoping they're smart.

And it's why I'm writing publicly about it.

Right now, I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that consulting is earning me roughly what I earned before I started GM AI. But for fewer hours per week. That gap — the hours I'm not billing — is deliberate. It's the space I'm protecting to work on the future state: software ideas, apps, the things that will eventually become the whole pie.

Consulting is a slice of that pie right now. The goal is for software to become all of it.

Why consulting first?

Because software companies don't build themselves, and I'm not starting with outside capital.

Consulting gives me three things I need: cash flow, domain knowledge, and proximity to real business problems. Those aren't small things. They're the raw material for building software that actually solves something.

The economics of software are structurally different from services — which is partly why this is a deliberate intention. SaaS businesses typically run at 70–90% gross margins. Consulting and services businesses, by comparison, sit considerably lower. Every additional client in a software business costs you very little to serve. Every additional consulting client costs you time — and time is finite. I can't scale myself — not yet anyway!

It's not to criticise consulting. It's just a description of its ceiling.

Why I'm exploring a partnerships onselling route

This is a fork in the road that I've thought about carefully (not sure "partnerships onselling" is the right wording!) and I'm not sure which way it might go yet.

I want to build solutions for industry-leading businesses. Those businesses are connected to lots of others with the same problem, whichever problem my solution solves. Theoretically, the solution we built together could become a new revenue stream for the 'pilot' business. They sell it into other businesses, I deliver it, and we share a license cost for say 12 or 24 months.

Could be an interesting model, right? It lowers the commercial risk for the piloting business: "If it works, you can sell it over and over again." It makes the initial consulting / build project engagement more attractive, because the upside is a whole new revenue stream, and we've both got skin in the game.

Does it make sense? What am I missing here? I'd love your thoughts on this. Maybe, just maybe, not everybody wants to become a software business! Which is a relevant rebuttal.

Evidently, it is giving away margin. But in return I get distribution. It's like the App Store model. Apps would make zero revenue without that distribution, so you just accept it. Is it necessary to give this margin away, at the sort of volumes of follow-on businesses we're talking about? Perhaps not.

When I build software for a business and own that relationship directly, those clients become reference customers — warm introducers who can lower the cost of every future sale I make. That value is real and maybe it's enough.

What I've found is that building is what I love to do. I love understanding a problem enough to picture its solution — and I'm good at making that leap. Building stuff is where I hit flow state, and it's where I want to spend as much time as possible.

I'm picturing that I could have lots of micro-SaaS products out there solving niche problems for small numbers of users paying small monthly subscription costs. That gets me excited.

What the gym leaderboard actually proved

A single build that crystallised this for me, is the Triple Threat Fitness competition leaderboard, which was deployed for the first edition of the competition on Sunday 7th of June.

I built it. It worked. It handled real traffic, at a real event, with solid security practices and infrastructure that held under moderate load.

What it proved: technical delivery. Robustness. That I can build something real and put it in front of people who depend on it.

What it didn't prove: client willingness to pay. I want to be clear about that — I wasn't charging for it. But I was told during the event that it was good enough to charge for. And I believe that.

The leaderboard wasn't a commercial milestone. It was a conviction milestone. It showed me that the gap between "consulting advice" and "working software" is one I can actually cross.

I want Growth Medium AI to become a micro-SaaS business, selling software solutions as apps, and earning 100% of its revenue from MRR, and zero consulting hours.

What "industry-leading" actually means to me

I keep using the phrase "industry-leading businesses" when I talk about the kinds of clients I want to build for — and I should be specific about what I mean, because it's not about size.

An industry-leading business isn't necessarily the biggest one in its vertical. It's one that cares enough to be talking about the stuff that matters. A thought leader sharing opinions, facilitating conversations that are important to their industry.

The Triple Threat competition is a perfect example. It was a pilot event, and it wasn't delivered by some global chain. Just one man who's passionate about building community. He's running competitions — doing the things that have a genuine impact on the people around him.

Those are the clients I want. Because that's where the meaningful work lives.

And strategically — those are the clients who become reference customers worth having. When someone in your industry sees that a business they respect is using your software, that's a warmer introduction than any cold outreach you'll ever send.

The dual-track bet: B2B software and DTC products

Alongside the B2B software track, I'm also building two direct-to-consumer products: an AI nutrition platform and a dog-training app. Problems I've encountered myself that I wanted to solve.

I'll be honest — I fully expect these to divide my focus.

That's not a bug. It's the model.

The idea is to pursue what gains traction and kill what doesn't. I'm a one-man, AI-driven operation. I can iterate in days, not months. This isn't waterfall delivery. It's not even traditional sprints. It's faster than that, and more productive — because I'm not managing a team, I'm managing a direction.

The beauty of being this agile is that I can run parallel experiments without the overhead that would kill a traditional agency. If the AI nutrition platform finds its users, I double down. If the dog-training app stalls, I learn from it and move on.

Every consulting engagement ends. Subscription revenue compounds.

The build in public tension — and why I'm doing it anyway

Writing this publicly while my consulting clients are watching is a bit scary.

Smaller clients will appreciate the vulnerability. They like the "learn as we go" approach. It matches how they operate.

Larger clients might find it more concerning and I'm aware of that.

But I pride myself on how well I build trust. And I don't believe that something I've posted online will carry more weight with a client — or be taken more literally — than what I've said to them directly. I want them to ask, and when they do, their input will likely shape how I move forward. The relationship is the thing. The post is context, not the contract.

Another thing worth naming: this is also a distribution strategy, not just a diary. The "build in public" movement has well-documented precedents — founders like Guillaume Moubeche at lemlist, Marc Lou, and others have used public transparency to build user bases, attract early customers, and create communities before they needed them. The risk is real — you can end up talking mostly to other builders rather than the buyers you actually want. I'm aware of that. I'm trying to make sure the content I share is useful to the businesses I want to serve, not just interesting to other founders.

The bottom line

Consulting is how I get close to business problems, and how I'm funding the transition. Software is where the transition leads.

I don't have all the answers — the IP agreements, the exact product model, the right mix of B2B and DTC. I'm figuring those out as I build.

But the direction is clear. And I'd rather share the messy, honest version of that journey than wait until I have something polished to say.

If you're a business owner thinking about commissioning software, or a founder navigating a similar pivot, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. Drop a comment or reach out directly.

Let's talk about it.