Thanks for always answering my questions. I know your content focuses on mass market automation, which is why I keep hitting a wall. I'm in maritime with 15 years in deep sea vessels as a senior officer, touching everything—vessel ops, parts, inventory, payroll, weather routing, fuel consumption, office correspondence, vendors. It takes years to understand how a ship runs. The niche is wide open for AI, but everything is high-dollar and big. My company moves millions in fuel, parts, and cargo; there's no $500–$5,000 setup fee version. I've pitched my labor union, and they're interested, but I'm a random guy with no track record asking a multi-billion-dollar company for this AI rollout—it's a tough sell. They view it from a corporate white-collar perspective and miss the blue-collar reality of the job: how the pieces fit together to get the vessel from point A to B safely without burning money, which I know well. That's why credibility is tricky. I'm stuck: should I go all in on this niche, bootstrap solo using my background to get in front of these companies, or partner with someone who already has AI credibility and bring my 15 years of insider knowledge? If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Well, I think you're just giving yourself reasons why you can't succeed instead of seeing this as a massive opportunity. The fact that you have all this blue-collar work is what legitimizes you—you actually understand how these ships run, which is the core fundamental of what you're trying to tell me. An AI person who's credible in AI but lacks that blue-collar experience has very little of that. The most successful outbound campaigns I've run aren't outsiders trying to sell marketing services for your niche; they're people who actually work in your niche and have worked there with a company for years. So here's what we tried: first, I positioned myself as an outsider trying to tell you how to do things better; second, I positioned myself as one of you, having gone through the same struggles, ups, and downs, approaching it from your perspective. The second approach worked really well. You actually have a gold mine here—your 15 years of experience is extremely credible. I'm sure you don't have white-collar credibility from corporate meetings, but you're the person who actually does the job. I think you'll be surprised at how many corporate types will look at that and say, 'Okay, yeah, this guy probably knows more than some XYZ analyst fresh from a Stanford master's.' So what would I do? Okay, you have no track record because you're trying to go from 0 to 100 right off the bat. The probability of landing a $300,000 client for a widespread AI rollout is quite low. My recommendation: start small. In Maker School, we typically put people on the simplest, easiest job platforms like Upwork or Freelancer.com so they can say, 'Hey, I've worked with a real paying client,' which immediately gets you 80% of the way to being able to pitch whoever you want. The scariest thing for a client is working with a freelancer or agency that's never worked with a client before—you're putting your reputation on the line, especially doubly so if you're a big business with a lot to lose. So hopefully that makes sense. I would just get going; you don't have to stay in the maritime space. As long as you have some AI experience working with real paid clients, you're fine—maybe make that your first go-to. [Snorts] I want you to know that everything you've talked about so far—this maritime stuff—is very similar to oil and gas. In Alberta, where I used to live, my partner Cody works with tons of oil and gas companies and routinely sells $100,000 to $200,000 websites—yeah, $100,000 for a website, which sounds insane but is true. He does this using the mechanisms I've talked about, gaining credibility from smaller sources and building it up, plus his blue-collar background. I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from; I wouldn't treat this as a negative, I treat it as a positive. [gasps]