Hey everyone,
It’s been about a month since my last update, and for good reason. I’ve been quite busy, navigating the intense reality of the past three weeks: my first semester of electrical engineering at Polytechnique + demands of a growing automation business.
The experience has been a masterclass in pressure, and that pressure has forced me to confront some brutal truths about my business model… This is the ground-truth story of what I’ve learned.
The Start of School… (again)
My Schedule
The first week of school was a surprisingly calm. With a light homework load, I was energized, taking client meetings between classes and spending my evenings building automations. I was "doing the work."
During this time, I started reading Alex Hormozi's $100M Money Models. The book was a slap in the face. It gave me the vocabulary to diagnose my own business, and the diagnosis was grim: I didn’t have a business. I had a high-stress low-paying job that I had created for myself. 😔
The proof was in a single project—a "vibe check" system for a really nice person I met at StartupFest. What I initially scoped as a simple 20-hour project ballooned into a 120-hour marathon of custom development and revisions. When I finally did the math, dividing the project fee by the hours invested… I was making a fraction of the minimum wage in Montreal. 💀
This is the "Customization Trap," and I was caught deep within it. I was selling my time for a fixed, low price, and it was a completely unsustainable model.
This is literally 100+ hours of work…
The Pivot to Predictability: Building an Engine
The pain of that realization forced me to pivot. My #1 priority is now building a predictable, scalable client acquisition machine.
Relying on events is great, but it isn’t a system. So, I invested in cold email infrastructure with Instantly.ai and started learning the ropes. My first few campaigns were kinda mid, but they produced results: a 3% reply rate and a booked meeting.
That meeting was another critical lesson. I went in planning to sell my "AI Responder Agent," but the prospect was only interested in one thing: lead generation. (duh)
It’s an obvious truth in hindsight, but one you only learn by doing: businesses don’t buy automations; they buy results. Specifically, they buy more leads and more revenue. The data backs this up: selling sales-related systems can be over 3.5 times more lucrative than selling internal, efficiency-focused ones. This has sharpened my focus completely.
The "Grant Bot"
This new focus led me to my next project: the "Grant Bot." It’s a system I'm building for a startup that scrapes the internet for government grants in Canada → then recommends the best fits.
The client's reaction to the V1 demo was immediate and powerful, even though I was just showing him a spreadsheet of scraped data. Why? Because the Grant Bot isn't a "nice-to-have" vitamin; it's a painkiller.
Finding grants is a manual, soul-crushing nightmare for founders. These grants can be worth hundreds of thousands, even millions, in funding. A system that solves this problem is not just selling an automation: it's literally selling free money.
The build process has been challenging. Scraping some of these government sites is a nightmare, I had to reverse-engineer the API calls for a Salesforce-based portal, which took hours. But the struggle is worth it because the end product is so undeniably valuable and, crucially, ✨ productizable. ✨
The Path Forward: From Freelancer to a Real Business
The last few weeks have been packed. I’ve had to make modifications for past clients, juggle classes (and learn which ones to skip), and push through the difficult middle stages of a new product build.
My business model has to evolve. I am moving away from highly personalized, one-off projects. The goal is to take on jobs that involve building high-value systems that can be productized and sold to multiple clients. 🤑 I get paid to build it once, and then I get paid again to distribute it, without starting from scratch.
So, what's next?
Finish the Grant Bot. This is my first true productized asset, and it is my top priority.
Continue Building the Acquisition Engine. I'll be running more cold email campaigns focused exclusively on lead generation services. I also see a huge opportunity on platforms like Upwork. Not as a long-term home, but as a place for targeted strikes to win high-value sales-focused projects.
It’s been a painful, clarifying month. But the lessons have been invaluable. The goal is no longer just to be a builder, build a business with real products and customers on continuity.
Thanks for following the journey. I’ll catch you in the next one.