The turning point came when Mike's now-business-partner Baker showed him an early version of HighLevel. Mike saw two-way texting, CRM tools and automation capabilities that his e-commerce stack could never match. Within hours, he mapped out a vision for what the platform could become for fitness coaches.

Mike and Baker launched AR Funnel with a simple thesis: build once, deliver many. They niched down to online fitness coaches (an audience Mike already understood from years in the supplement and fitness space) and flipped the old agency ratio. Instead of 20% template and 80% custom, AR Funnel runs 80% template and 20% custom. That shift made fulfillment repeatable and hiring straightforward. They no longer needed unicorn employees who could do everything. They needed specialists.

The offer was streamlined to three components: done-for-you onboarding, group coaching calls and live support through chat and office hours. Pricing landed at $1,000 upfront and $497 per month with no contracts. Every month the client makes a fresh decision to stay, which forces AR Funnel to keep earning the relationship.

To fix early churn (which peaked at 24%), they paused acquisition for eight months and rebuilt the product. They added 12-hour live chat support seven days a week, twice-daily Zoom office hours and a refined onboarding process that now completes in 16 days across three calls. They also stopped selling to clients who weren't ready, turning away anyone doing less than $5,000 a month.

Mike sold the coffee company, shut down the agency and went all in. The team grew from two to 25. And because 95% of revenue is recurring, all three co-founders took simultaneous vacations last July ... and revenue dipped only 2%.