Alright, so im winding the year down (even though we just closed like 3 new deals and had the busiest and most profitable quarter of the business ever)

I wanted to take some time to reflect, I’ll still be working, well into Christmas Eve - BUT I do want to only work on new clients to make everything run smoothly and then be hands off

Also, I want to plan my 2026, so I come back into the year, with energy, enthusiasm and knowing wtf to do - cause some people start the year with their eyes closed

This post is going to be a little different - its mostly about me, the market and what i’ve learned this year.

Jack and Jill is a two way market place, for finding jobs and finding talent - its a new AI platform, seems interesting, and you can use AI to help find you opportunities.

Jack helps you find jobs, Jill helps you find candidates

Actually this was a good quarter - we just brought on a 3rd client, hired our first ever junior developer (we usually only hire seniors) and we started this newsletter!

So shout out to everyone thats been here since like Feb/March 2025!!!

If you’ve been an early subscriber, message me with any request, can be CV build, Linkedin Profile revamp, or just career advice - happy to chat!!

Oh, we also opened up a company in AMERICA!! So that was exciting (that company is nearly broke as a joke now, cause a client owes us lots of money and still hasnt paid lol - more on that in Q3 2025…

What else, new clients, new developers joining, and I became more hands on with the developer community, I wanted to contribute and give back, not just take and sell or contract developers out 🙂

Q2 was a profitable month, especially April, once all the new clients started paying - I also wanted to be higher tough and more client facing - so I went to visit some clients.

Visiting clients paid off handsomely, the one client basically doubled out book of business and profitability with them! Met them in April, in May we started billing for twice as much work 🙂 was awesome - repeat after me!! Relationships are Valuable

That was the good side of Q2 but then came the losses…

We had a long term client go bankrupt and close down, we serviced them for 3 years, it was a bitter sweet memory, they helped us start the business and were our first client!!!

I thought my last email to them was a great one, and if you want to read it - im sharing it here!

The new client we got - Zervio - started delaying their payments to us - it was the first time i started to experience cashflow problems from clients - and this would be just the start, they’d owe us over 150’000 Rand by the end of the engagement….

Oh we also had our first hire from this newsletter - it was a disaster hahaha we had to fire the guy - he was a useless dev, but interviewed really really well - goes to show…

At the end of Q3, I emailed Zervio, to tell them because of unpaid invoices (4 months worth!!!) we will be pausing development

They immediately canceled our contract and stopped working with us… very unprofessional, but this happens in this game… It was my first time dealing with a client not paying…

I still paid the developer every month on time, I still kept him as an employee - im proud of this decision, to put people, ahead of profits. It wasnt an easy decision, because not only were we owed ZAR150k, but i also paid out ZAR100k to the dev in the meanwhile - thats a ZAR250k hole in my pocket - that I probably wont be recovering…

Not only did we have this quarter of a million rand hole to fill - BUT - my grandmother also had a stroke, I had to leave my beach vacation a few days early, drive 7hours to macedonia and go support my family

Running around to doctors, driving family around, seeing the strain it put on everyone

This was a really difficult quarter, financially and emotionally - to add to financial disaster, a freaken TREE fell on my car - what a fk up lol - that was another 70K ZAR gone out the window - so we are now 330K ZAR poorer, in one quarter lol

I have to type this on the next section, because i’ve reached the character limit lol

We sorted out the car - she is like new, and we are suing the municipality, hopefully we get some money back, but i’ve already written it off and I deem it unlikely :))

My grandmother past away, it was the first death i’ve experienced in my family, my brother and I were strong for the family, and we helped shoulder the difficulties, I’m very proud of us both - also, i’ve never seen a dead person in real life, the whole thing of “life isn’t permanent” really hit hard - but I think positively, I definitely take some things more seriously (health, relationships, mind) but also relaxed a bit (controling everything, business) - I just tried to control what I could, and accepted what I couldnt 🙂

We got a new client - towards end of Q3, an existing client refered some new business to us, a startup in Spain was looking to hire a CTO!!

It was the most expensive hire we ever facilitiated, it was also the strongest developer and executive i’ve ever placed, this guy was and still is a machine! And we actually nearly lost the deal - He was our second candidate, client said no because he was so expensive - but one of the guys they wanted to hire, last minute tried to leverage other offers to get a better salary etc, and thats when the client came back to us and interviewed our candidate - things went so well, that by the end of the call, instead of thinking why is he so expensive, they thought he was a bargain (they will need to keep paying him more and more salary and equity) but they will get rewarded for such an excellent CTO!

We just got another new client in Denmark, they paid their first invoice (thank goodness) after cashflow issues with other startups… We did two more interviews with clients, one is starting this week, the other is next week monday. We have another potential deal that we will probably close 90% certain - next week.

Its been a crazy Q4 - we’ve done like 600K ZAR in NEW profit (most of it has been realized) - we’ve never had such a profitable Q4 - almost hit a 1 Million ZAR Q4 - which is pretty crazy to think

Oh and another thing - 2 of you guys have reached out to me, to thank me for the help, advice and strategy in looking for work - you basically went from spending months struggling to find a role, to landing one in a few weeks - i feel really happy about that! Definitely a highlight of this community!

I’m not going to let the wins of 2026 get to me, nor the losses - what I am going to do is to make sure we become better at basically EVERYTHING

2026 is about leveling up

I will spend less time doing sales and marketing, more time thinking about strategy and learning AI

AI and Agents - This isnt something souly for me, you gotta get on this train too, and hard!!!

I am allocating about 5k ZAR per month on training for the above - basically i’ll spend 50-100k ZAR next year, just on training, R&D, improvement - I need to be better at all of this - it’s the future, and we are early - even if i spend 100k, im confident i’ll make 10X that back in profits over the next year or two - and thats on the low end of the estimate

Outside of my learning - i really want to get better at my sales and marketing - more time building relationships (attending events, chatting to people on Linkedin and probably doing something like an office hours for you guys)

My Sales needs to ramp up hard, better quality of leads, reaching out to them not just with cold email but linkedin, cold calling, youtube videos and google content

Check out the new website i’ve created for this!

And yeah beautiful people, 2025 was a year of bumps and bruises, some good times, some bad times - but im spending the rest of December planning the year and making sure im working ON the business and less IN the business

Im excited for 2026! and i’ll make a post about my plans for 2026 in Jan, so be on the look out for that next year!!

Might make one more post for December but if not - imma love and leave you for a few weeks!!!

BTW

Check out my Insta Post - this is how i’ll be preping the year ahead - setting my goals, plans, schedule, etc

I know I’ve said im back like twice already haha - once was after some much deserved rest and another after like 3 weeks of not writing.

Its not easy doing this stuff you know :)) but honestly, i missed this

I missed sitting by my macbook pro m1 (13inch) - lying on the couch, and having my fingers go at it for 30-40 minutes

ANY HOW!

Let me know if you like this and as usual: