My Grand Slam Offer Struck Out

My first real offer was so good nobody bought it.

That sounds like a humble brag. It's not. It's the most expensive lesson I learned in year one of this company, and I'm going to hand it to you for free so you can skip it.

The door-to-door days

When I first started Hyppo, I was knocking doors. Roofers, plumbers, HVAC guys, anybody with a truck and a phone number on the side of it. I filmed a lot of it. Those door-to-door videos did about 148,000 views, which is also the only reason I don't have a perfect rating on Google. One guy really did not appreciate being in a video on his own porch. Fair enough.

Before that I'd been selling odds and ends. A website here, a little automation there. Widgets and gadgets. It worked, but it wasn't a business, it was a guy with a laptop. So I did what every founder who's read a business book does: I decided to build a Grand Slam Offer. Make it so good they can't say no.

I still believe in that idea, by the way. That's the part that makes this story hurt.

Introducing: The Ultimate AI Growth Stack

That was the name. I'm not proud of it. It was my first attempt at productizing, turning the random stuff I could do into one package I could actually deliver on repeat.

Here's what was in the box:

• A free pair of Meta smart glasses, which I paid for out of pocket
• AI avatar videos pushed to your social profiles
• Automatic captions and editing on those videos
• Review filtering: bad reviews go private, good ones go public
• Our CRM, which at the time was just white-labeled GoHighLevel (why I started a company by leaning on GoHighLevel is a whole separate article, and the short version is that GoHighLevel sucks)
• An intake form wired into that CRM
• A dedicated Slack support channel
• And the headliner: ASP-MG, our Meta glasses automation

ASP-MG was the piece I was proudest of. You record a POV clip through the glasses, fire it off to our bot, and the AI writes the caption and pushes it to every one of your social accounts. Hands free content machine for the trades.

Here's the actual pitch video. Fair warning, this is me when I was just starting out, and I am no Russell Brunson. Please don't roast me too bad. I tried.

Count the value stack in there. It goes on for two straight minutes. I was giving away a $350 pair of glasses just to get someone in the door.

Nobody cared.

The part where nobody wants it

Here's what a whiteboard doesn't show you: the plumber has to actually wear the glasses. He has to remember to hit record while he's under a sink. He has to learn the glasses, learn the bot, learn to film, then do all of that while managing a crew and doing the job he actually gets paid for.

I was asking a guy who's already exhausted to take on a second job as a content creator. And the pitch was "don't worry, the AI handles the easy part."

I've written before that the whole point of good technology is that you use it less. Every click you remove is a small gift you hand the person on the other end. The Ultimate AI Growth Stack did the exact opposite. It handed a busy person a new device, a new app, and a new habit, and called it a favor.

The tech was cool. The tech was genuinely cool. And it did not matter at all.

Sales can't save a bad offer

I'm a big believer that sales is the most important skill a founder has. I still think that. But this is where I learned the ceiling on it.

You can be the best closer alive. If the offer doesn't do what people actually want, you're just going to be really good at getting told no. A great salesperson with a bad offer is a snake oil guy with better posture.

Every offer that works does one of two things, and the great ones do both:

• It makes the customer's life easier.
• It makes the customer more money.

That's the whole test. Not "is it impressive." Not "would a tech guy think this is sick." Does it take work off their plate, or put money in their pocket? The Ultimate AI Growth Stack added work and promised money someday, maybe, if they filmed enough sink repairs. So it failed both, and no amount of charm at the door was going to fix that.

And piling more stuff into the box doesn't fix it either. Eleven items in a value stack where item one creates homework is just eleven reasons to say no. Value isn't the size of the pile. It's whether the pile does something for the person holding it.

What we sell now

Our offers today are boring by comparison, and that's the point. More calls. More views. Less for the owner to touch.

One example: we went back and analyzed our own clients' websites, and the ones with a real blog on them were pulling 78% more views than the ones without. So now that's an offer. Not "here's a gadget, go make content." It's "we'll make your site get found, you keep fixing roofs." Easier life, more money, zero glasses.

Same company, same founder, same belief in the grand slam offer. The difference is I stopped building offers for the version of the customer I imagined and started building them for the tired guy who actually answers the door.

If you're technical and you're about to package up your first offer, do yourself a favor. Before you fall in love with how it works, ask whether it makes someone's Tuesday easier or their bank account bigger. If the honest answer is "well, it's really cool," put the glasses down.