Growth & Hiring Plan

* Team cost at a blended $27/hr full-time-equivalent ($4,680/mo per FTE). Sections below (comp plan, founder pay, 5-year outlook) still run on the Aug 3 baseline — differences are under 1%. † Today's margin exists because Jordyn does the delivery unpaid — steady-state agency margin at these capacity numbers is ~35–40%, improving with scale because new accounts ($2.5k avg) out-earn the legacy base ($1.6k avg). The levers: keep raising average account value, high part-timer utilization, productized site builds.

The setup: the alliance opens access to 650+ Bodhi installers. Channel partnerships realistically convert low single digits of a member base in year one, so this model plans against 5% = 33 accounts over the first year (~3/mo) at a $3,000/mo average, layered on top of the base mid-case above. Includes the $500 first-month promo (−$16.5k). Hire against THIS case; scale up only when the trigger data says so.

33rd account lands ~Sep 2027. Bodhi year-1 revenue ≈ $504k after the promo → FY27 total ≈ $1.5M (vs ~$1.0M without the alliance). Profit shown is pre-G&A/office; all-in at Aug 2027 ≈ $90–95k/mo (~40%), DamarisActs ~$9k/mo, founder pay ~$60–65k/mo. Churn not modeled (25%/yr would trim ~10–15%).

Hiring at the 5% case — hard but doable without heroics

Team goes ~2 FTE → ~11 by November → ~27.5 by next August: ~2 hires per month sustained (one every two weeks). That's aggressive but manageable with Jordyn + directors interviewing — no dedicated recruiter needed at this tier. What still holds from the big-case playbook:

• Pod structure still applies — 1 social + 1 ads + ½ video per 10–12 accounts; Aug 2027 = ~6 pods. Hire each pod as its accounts reach ~8.
• Cohort onboarding, always — even at 3/mo, onboard installers in monthly batches with a shared playbook so each one costs less to launch than the last.
• Working capital: ~$25–40k buffer for hire-ahead payroll — coverable from cash flow at this tier; no raise needed.
• Nail the deal terms before Sep 15 regardless: Bodhi's cut (if any) and who eats the $500 promo.

📊 The tier band — and the 60-day triggers that tell you which curve you're on

Triggers (first 60 days, by ~Halloween): 2–4 signed → you're on the 5% curve, base hiring plan absorbs it. 8+ signed or 20+ discovery calls booked → you're on the 10–20% curve: start the recruiter search and hire a pod ahead. 15+ signed → ceiling curve: cap the cohort, open the waitlist, and revisit the 20% model above — it stops being hypothetical.

💰 What you can pay yourself with the alliance · 5% case · after G&A, DamarisActs 10%, and the 25% buffer

Even the 5% case roughly doubles founder pay by next August. At the higher tiers: ~$95k/mo at 10%, ~$140k+/mo at 20%. The 25% held back accumulates too — ~$156k of retained cash by Aug 2027 — which is what funds the next section.

A rate increase is the only lever in this plan that adds profit with no new hires and no new capacity — it drops straight to the bottom line, which is why margin jumps 3–5 points. By Q2 the portfolio (~45+ accounts) and the results dashboards make it defensible. Two ways to play it: new-clients-only (raise the rate card, grandfather existing — slower but zero churn risk) or across the board (the numbers above — worth pairing with a results recap to each client; even losing one $1.5k account to the raise still nets positive at +10%). The same % applies to the low/high bands proportionally.

The 25% held back covers taxes, tools/software, and hiring lead time (each new hire is paid for ~a month before they're productive). Two honest caveats: today's number is really wages — it's yours because you're doing the delivery; as hires absorb that work, the profit line becomes true owner pay. And through Q4 2026, expect to take less than the table shows — that's the heaviest hiring stretch, and cash paid to new people lands a month or two before their revenue does. From Q1 2027 on, the numbers are clean.

The policy (per Jordyn): McKinley & Katie get +10% each quarter for the first 6 months, then 5–7% every 6 months. Everyone hired after them comes in at market with yearly reviews. All employees, regardless of seniority: quarterly bonuses (modeled at 5% of pay) and 5% revenue share on any client they bring in — the Katie deal becomes company policy.

** Wages ×1.05 for quarterly bonuses, plus rev-share payouts (~$0.5k/mo once Katie's referrals + All Out Integrity are active). Why this works where "10%/quarter for everyone" didn't: the founding two are 2 of ~18 FTE by next August — their aggressive raises cost ~$1.7k/mo more than market, a rounding error against $137k revenue. Margins hold at 33% (39% with the Q2 rate raise) and your pay stays on its curve: $8.2k → $34–44k/mo. McKinley and Katie end the year up 28% with four bonuses each — earned, and affordable.

Jordyn's intent: McKinley, Katie, Anson, and the ads lead all become director-level as the business supports it. The natural trigger for each: their discipline grows to 2+ people under them — at that point they stop just doing the work and start owning the department (hiring input, quality, client escalations). Director comp = raise + a department override, sized when the trigger hits.

Nice side effect: this org chart answers the Q1 2027 "who manages 20 people" problem — four working directors, each running their lane, with Jordyn on clients and growth instead of day-to-day delivery.

The bar (per Jordyn): directors by next year, and $100k minimum BASE salary comes with the seat — before bonuses (~5% quarterly) and rev share, which stack on top. Floor dates = the director-trigger dates from the track above (each department reaching 2+ people). Two conditions carry over: the person must be full-time when the seat lands (Anson's Oct 2027 date therefore also pulls his FT commitment forward), and if growth runs slower than mid-case, a department's trigger — and its floor — slides with it. The money is tied to the seat; the seat is tied to the department existing.

💵 What the 2027 floors cost

Each floor only tops up the gap between the person's raise schedule (or bench rate) and $100k, and the schedules keep compounding — Katie's base outruns her floor by Aug 2029, McKinley's by early 2031 — so the cost peaks in Year 2 and shrinks:

Verdict: still yes. The tightest stretch is mid-2027 — three floors live at once cost ~$12k/mo against ~$46k/mo profit, and Year 1 margin dips to ~17% before recovering to ~29–30%. That's the real price of "directors next year, six figures with the title," and the model absorbs it. The reward is equally real: four people who joined a startup at $26–40/hr are all six-figure directors within ~14 months — a story that recruits its own bench underneath them.

"Total revenue" = actual dollars billed across the 12 months, not year-end run-rate — Year 1 collects $982k even though it exits at a $1.52M pace, because the growth happens during the year. Profit is all-in: the comp plan, office rent from Feb 2028 ($11k/mo, stepping to $15k/mo Feb 2030), every laptop and studio kit, and the corporate backbone below (HR, legal, finance). Fees rise +10% every April from 2027 on — that annual raise is what holds margins at ~30% even as G&A scales, and largely cancels churn's drag in years 4–5. DamarisActs takes 10% of profit off the top; founder pay is 75% of what remains (the rest stays as buffer).

🏛️ The corporate backbone — HR, legal & finance

Rule of thumb baked in: fractional before full-time, full-time only when the fractional version is saturated. HR follows headcount (~1 per 25–30 people); finance follows complexity, not size; a full-time general counsel isn't justified before ~50 people — a retainer covers it.

5-year G&A total: $768k — it trims cumulative profit from $4.74M to $3.97M and settles margins at ~30% instead of 36%. That's the honest cost of being a real employer: worth every dollar the first time HR catches a misclassified contractor or legal catches a bad client contract.

🏢 The office — when it makes sense, and what investors are actually for

Trigger: ~Dec 2027 – Feb 2028, when the model crosses ~19–20 FTE (~24 people), $150–160k MRR, and $55k+/mo profit. Before that, remote + per-shoot studio rentals is strictly cheaper. The spec at that size: 4,000–5,000 sq ft at ~$28–32/sq ft/yr ≈ $10–12k/mo — with a built-in filming studio, which is the part that actually earns its rent (kills per-shoot rental costs, upgrades every videography deliverable, and can be rented out as its own revenue line).

• The honest math on investors: by the trigger date, rent alone is ~7% of revenue — the business can carry it without anyone's money. What investors are for is the $120–180k buildout (studio construction ~$40–50k of it), done properly and early, plus a cash cushion — call it a $250–350k raise.
• Structure options: straight equity (expensive at your growth rate — you'd be selling cheap), revenue-share note (investor gets X% of revenue until 1.5–2× returned), or the landlord-funded route (negotiate buildout into a longer lease — no investor at all).
• Recommendation the numbers support: don't raise for survival — raise only if the studio becomes a product (content days, StrongHER-style event filming, studio rental). Otherwise sign the lease in early 2028 from cash flow and keep 100% of a company throwing off $100k/mo by 2029.

The mission: outreach to people experiencing homelessness — spreading the Gospel, and walking alongside them into real programs: jobs, sobriety, and reintegration into society. The funding model in this plan: 10% of Damaris profit, off the top, before anything else — modeled after a tithe, and it's the first line item after profit in the table above, not an afterthought.

Two things worth knowing: the $474k is a floor, not a ceiling — once it's a real 501(c)(3), DamarisActs can raise outside donations and grants on top of the business's tithe, and homeless-services work qualifies for significant grant funding. And partner-first beats build-first early on: local shelters, recovery programs, and job-training orgs already exist — the first $50k does the most good funding outreach into them rather than building parallel programs.

The vision: a robotics division led by Jordyn's fiancé — Boston Dynamics reseller + global robotics consulting (~$100k per consulting contract). Startup package: office/workshop space, 5 Spot robots + engineering equipment, and 2 engineers supporting the lead. Modeled below on the CONSERVATIVE stack (base plan + Bodhi 5%), with DamarisActs' 10% continuing throughout.

🚦 Launch gates — stand it up when ALL THREE are true

• 1 · Marketing profit ≥ $100k/mo for two consecutive quarters — so the ~$47–66k burn stays under half of profit and never threatens payroll, DamarisActs, or your own pay. On the 5% stack this arrives ~mid-2027; without Bodhi, ~early 2028.
• 2 · $250k+ cash beyond working capital — covers the equipment-finance deposit + 4 months of division burn as runway. Retained-cash curve says ~Q1–Q2 2028.
• 3 · Two consulting contracts (~$200k) signed or LOI'd BEFORE buying robots — sell first, buy second. His network proves demand before capex; ideally the first two contracts pay for the first two Spots.

The verdict: earliest responsible launch is Q1–Q2 2028 with robots equipment-financed and 2 contracts pre-sold; fully cash-funded (robots bought outright) is ~Q4 2028. Without the Bodhi deal at all, push each ~2–3 quarters. Natural pairing: the office decision (~Q1 2028) and this division should be ONE real-estate decision — a workshop-capable space with the filming studio — and if investors ever enter the picture, THIS division (capex-heavy, hardware, global contracts) is the natural home for that money, not the marketing agency. One caveat to price properly before launch: liability insurance and international operating costs for robots on client sites are real and not fully modeled — get a broker quote as part of gate 3.

• Full-time capacity (from Jordyn): social 5–6 · video 6–7 · website 3–4 concurrent builds · ads 4–6. Midpoints used; part-time capacity scales with hours (40 hr = 1 FTE).
• Service mix on accounts, from actual CRM data: social ~70% · ads ~50% · website ~35% (builds, project-based) · video ~30%.
• Growth (per Jordyn, Aug 3): 50% of the current 13-lead / $32.5k pipeline closes, phased over Aug–Oct, plus 2–5 new referral accounts signed per month at ~$2,500 avg (recent referrals: Sweet Sips $1.5k, Guild $2k, RepCard $3.5k, Rogue $5k, Bluewater $5k). Main table = 3.5/mo midpoint.
• Rate-increase scenario: +5–10% applied to the whole portfolio starting Q2 2027 (Apr); team costs unchanged. New-clients-only rollout would phase the gain in over ~6 months instead.
• Comp plan: McKinley & Katie +10%/quarter for the first 6 months (Nov + Feb raises), then 5–7%/6 months (6% used, next hits Aug 2027); later hires at market ($27/hr blended) with yearly reviews; quarterly bonuses at 5% of pay for everyone; 5% rev share on employee-referred clients for everyone. (An earlier check showed 10%/quarter for the whole team compounds to +61% comp in a year and erases profit — that's why it's founders-only and time-boxed.)
• 5-year model adds: 25%/yr client churn (marketing-agency average; ~2.1%/mo compounding), referral pace held flat at 3.5/mo for all five years (no credit for brand momentum or directors selling — upside not modeled), fee raises +10% every April from 2027 on (per Jordyn), founders' 6%/6-month raises continuing throughout (McKinley ≈ $50/hr by 2031 — director-level comp), bench wages +5%/yr at reviews, laptops $2.5k/hire, studio kit $12k + $8k per added videographer. G&A (HR from Jul 2027 per Jordyn, fractional CFO → finance manager, legal retainer) phased $1k → $22k/mo per the corporate-backbone table — $768k over 5 years, deducted in the table. Office rent IS deducted in the 5-year table ($11k/mo from Feb 2028, $15k/mo from Feb 2030); the monthly profit rows in earlier sections predate the office. DamarisActs = 10% of all-in profit, taken first (placeholder % — adjustable); founder pay = 75% of post-giving profit.
• Excludes: founder pay, tools/software, rev-share payouts (Katie 5% ×3, Asia 5% ×1 — tracked in the CRM's Overhead panel; Rick's was waived Aug 2026), and one-time project fees (which would improve margins).