Scope of work  ·  working draft

The Focus412 Engine

August 2026 to January 2027. Prepared for Philip Engle by Travis Marshall, ChurchOps.AI.

The bottom line

What
One platform that holds the Essentials. Every partner church logs in, works the four phases, and walks out with the artifacts. You see all of them from one screen.
Who owns it
You do. It lives at your address from day one, and in January the account, the domain and the keys are all yours.
Cost
$15,000, at whichever of two paces suits your cash flow. Details below.
Live
January 2027, with your lead generator running by the end of September.
Replaces
Google Drive. Mailchimp. Calendly. Thinkific when you are ready to move the on-demand cohort.

This is pulled straight from our last few conversations, not from a template.

It is the next step in getting this set up right, and it is a work in progress. Nothing here is final until we are both good with it and we agree on how we walk through it all. Expect it to change, probably more than once.

Every section has a note box, and there is a markup tool at the bottom. As you read, keep what is right, cut what is not, and tell me what I missed. It all lands in one email to me with a single tap.

Jump to the markup tool  ↓

Two sides of one house

This is the cleanest way to hold it. There is what churches touch, and there is what only Focus412 touches. Same building, two doors.

The church doorPartner churches

What a church sees when they log in.
  • Their dashboard and where they stand
  • Discover, Design, Develop, Deploy, unlocking as they earn it
  • The toolkit for the phase they are in
  • Their assessment results and what they mean
  • Their exports, kept in one place
  • Book their next call with you
The Focus412 doorYour team

You, Jeremy, Christy, Angela, Drew, Renee.
  • Every partner church on one screen
  • Unlock, review, and step into any church
  • The lead generator and everyone in the pipeline
  • What you are learning across all of them
  • Proposals, scheduling, the ops side
  • The library your videos live in

The build, in four phases

We are going to build your engine the same way you build a church. Discover, Design, Develop, Deploy. That is not a cute parallel. It is the right order, and it is the order that keeps this from drifting.

DiscoverAugust

Nothing gets built until we know where everything lives.

What happens

  • An architecture call with Drew and Renee, and you if you want to be on it. We decide the address.
  • You pick where the platform lives. The four real options and their tradeoffs are further down this page.
  • I get access to what you have already built: the lead generator, the org builder, the playbook template, the metrics dashboard, the action plan, and the Essentials kit itself.
  • We lock one instrument of record for the team health assessment before anything gets coded.
  • We map the four phases: what unlocks what, and what a church has to finish before the next thing opens.
  • We build out the full tool list together. What is on this page today is what I know from two conversations, not the finished list.

You will know it is done when

You are looking at a wireframe of the whole platform, on a screen, before a single line of it is real.

Why this comes first: if we build the tools separately and merge them later, they fight. Pour the foundation, let it harden, then build the rooms on top of it. Doing it the other way around is the exact problem you are trying to get out of.

DesignSeptember

The building goes up, and the lead generator goes live inside it.

What gets built

  • The platform, live at its real address, secured and yours.
  • Login, and the three levels of access we landed on together: church staff, the pastor or exec pastor liaison, and coach.
  • Churches as real records. Create one, invite their people, set who sees what.
  • The four phases as a working shell, with the locks and the unlocking.
  • Progress tracking, and your view across every church at once.
  • A coach can step into any church and see exactly what they see. No more exporting an org chart to show someone an org chart.
  • The lead generator ships this month. It is the quickest, smallest build on the list, it does not wait on anything else, and it is the one that ends Mailchimp. You wanted something working early. This is it.

You will know it is done when

A church takes your assessment on your site and lands in your pipeline with follow-up you did not write. And you log in as coach, create a partner church, and watch them show up on your screen.

If the on-demand partner starts in September, they are our first live test. If the timing slips, nothing else does.

DevelopOctober to December

The toolkit fills up. This is the bulk of the six months.

What gets built

  • The team health assessment, running on one instrument, with the individual profile and the team roll-up.
  • Assessment administration. Angela assigns an assessment to a church, sets the due date, and the platform chases the stragglers and shows you completion counts. We build the box for it now even if the automatic reminders land later, exactly the way you described it.
  • The org builder, off Claude and into the platform, where two people can move the same box and both see it move.
  • The leader playbook generator.
  • The metrics dashboard, taking a church's own export and showing them what they have and what they are missing.
  • The action plan, wired to the four phases so a church always knows their next thing.
  • Whatever else the tool list grows into during Discover.
  • Every tool gates, every tool exports, and a coach can see and unlock all of it.

You will know it is done when

A partner church works a real phase, in the real platform, and exports a real artifact you did not have to touch.

Roughly one tool every two weeks. Order is yours to set once we see the wireframe.

DeployJanuary

It becomes yours.

What gets built and handed over

  • Your side of the house: engagement proposals, call scheduling, and the library your videos and downloads live in.
  • Migration. Every partner off Google Drive and into the platform.
  • The handoff. The code, the repo, the domain, the keys, the hosting account. All of it in your hands.
  • Drew trained to run it, plus a written runbook so the answer to "how does this work" is never only "call Travis."

You will know it is done when

January rollout. Your partners are in it, Drew can drive it, and Focus412 owns the engine outright.

The tools

This is the working list from two conversations, grouped by who uses it. It is not a limit and it is not finished. Discover is where we build it out properly.

This kit has seven, eight tools, some much bigger, some much smaller. Philip, on our call

You said that about the client-facing kit, so that is where I have put it. The coaches' tools and your admin tools sit on top of that, not inside it.

What bounds this build is the calendar, not a tool count. Six months, and my build days are half of Tuesdays and all of Thursdays. Add whatever belongs on the list. If something turns out far bigger than it looked, I tell you before it starts rather than after. That is the only rule I need.

The working list

Open this and mark it up. Keep what is right, cut what is not, and add what is missing.

The Essentials Kit Companion

What a partner church uses, phase by phase. Your seven or eight.

1

Lead Generator Assessment

Public and free. Culture, structure, people, systems. Reads them against the barrier for their size, then follows up in your voice without you touching it.

Ends Mailchimp
2

Team Health Assessment

The staff instrument, the individual profile and the team roll-up. The report comes out in your format and your language.

Ends the form to deck grind
3

Org Chart Builder

Yours, moved off Claude and made real. Two people can move the same box and both see it move.

Ends export and re-share
4

Leader Playbook Generator

They upload what they have, choose what fits, and get a playbook draft in their voice, ready for their designer.

Ends the template deck
5

Metrics Dashboard

A church drops in their own export. It shows the trends they have and, more usefully, names the numbers they are not tracking yet.

Ends the one-off spreadsheet build
6

The Action Plan

Your four-phase plan as the spine of their dashboard. Always shows their next thing. This is the skeleton everything else hangs on.

Ends Google Drive

Coaches' tools

What you, Jeremy and Christy use while you are coaching a church.

7

The Telescope and the Microscope

Every partner church on one screen, and one tap into any of them to see exactly what they see. Unlock a phase, review their org chart, leave a note on a call.

Ends "can you export that and send it"
8

Assessment Administration

Angela assigns an assessment to a church, sets the due date, and the platform chases the stragglers and shows completion counts. Built so the automatic reminders can drop in later.

Ends the chase
9

Cross-Church Insight

What you are learning across every church you have ever assessed. By size, by age, by state, by single site or multisite. The thing nobody else in your space can say.

Your differentiator

Super admin and ops

The Focus412 business, not the coaching.

10

Lead Pipeline

Everyone who has taken the free assessment, where they landed, and what they need. Leads sit apart from active partners, exactly as you described.

Ends Mailchimp reporting
11

Scheduling and Proposals

A church books their next call with you from inside their own dashboard, and your engagement proposals come out of the same system.

Ends Calendly
12

Resource Library

Your videos and downloads, held inside the phase they belong to, unlocked when you say so. Ready whenever you want to move the on-demand cohort over.

Replaces Thinkific, $125 a month

Where it lives

The first thing Discover settles. Four honest options. Tap each one, then tap the one you want.

You already leaned one way on this: everything under focus412.com, with the admin side, the client side and the public side all living there. Option A is the fastest way to give you exactly that. Here is the honest comparison anyway.

A. A door on your siteMy pick

portal.focus412.com, sitting beside the site Drew and Renee are building.

In favor

  • Drew and Renee keep their site. I never touch it.
  • One DNS record is the entire ask of them. That is a short call, not a negotiation.
  • It still reads as Focus412 to every church that uses it.
  • Fastest to stand up. We are building in August instead of planning in August.
  • If the portal ever has a bad day, the public site is untouched. That works the other way too.

Against

  • Two systems to keep visually in sync as the brand evolves.
  • A church notices the address change when they cross from the site into the portal.
B. One system, later

The portal and the public site rebuilt as a single thing, once Drew and Renee have theirs finished.

In favor

  • One brand surface, one bill, one story.
  • The lead generator on the public page and the portal behind it become the same system, so a visitor turns into a lead turns into a partner with no seam anywhere.
  • Best long-term end state if the platform becomes the center of how Focus412 works.

Against

  • It puts me inside Drew and Renee's work while they are still standing the site up.
  • Their site's uptime becomes partly my problem, and mine becomes partly theirs.
  • Slowest start. Nothing gets built until the site plan is agreed.
  • Worth knowing: Option A does not block this. You can go A now and B in a year without rebuilding the portal.
C. Its own address

focus412.ai, or something like it, standing on its own.

In favor

  • Total control, zero entanglement with anyone else's work.
  • Can be standing in a day.
  • Cleanest option if you ever want to spin the platform out as its own product with its own name.

Against

  • A second brand surface you have to explain to every church.
  • It weakens the "this is Focus412" feeling that is most of what you are buying.
  • Two domains to renew, two certificates, two things to remember.
D. A door per church

milestone.focus412.com, cwc.focus412.com. The shape you saw on the screen, with your churches' names on it.

In favor

  • It lands. A church feels like the platform is theirs, because their name is on the door.
  • Makes a very good invitation email.

Against

  • This is not really an alternative to A, B or C. It layers on top of whichever one you pick.
  • A small amount of setup per church, which stops being small somewhere around thirty churches unless we automate it, which we can.

What I would do

A, with D layered on once we are live. It gives you the focus412.com shape you described, it is the least disruptive to Drew and Renee, it is reversible, and it means we start building this month.

Tell me on the architecture call and I will build toward whichever one you pick.

What stays yours

Ownership, plainly

You said this matters to you. Here it is written down instead of assumed.

The engine is yours.

Built for Focus412, handed to Focus412. Not rented, not licensed, not sitting on my platform behind a switch I control.

The code, the repo, the domain, the keys, the hosting account.

All of it moves to you in January. You could take it to another developer tomorrow and they could pick it up.

Your methodology never leaves your building.

The Essentials lives inside your platform, not inside somebody else's product where it becomes a feature they own.

You asked what it costs to run. Fair question.

Built this way it is hosting plus whatever the AI features actually use, and it is small, in the range of what one of the subscriptions you are cancelling costs. I will put a real number in front of you during Discover, once we know the shape, and again before the handoff. It should not be a surprise and it will not be buried.

No platform tax on your partners.

No per-seat fee and no per-church license. Nothing about the engine adds a line to a church's invoice. If a church later hires me directly for something of their own, that is a separate conversation you introduce, not something I attach to your work.

The next-round list

Good ideas, queued

Real things from our two calls that are not in this build. Not gone. Queued, and written down so neither of us has to remember them.

Custom builds for an individual church.

Those get "I want you to meet Travis," exactly as you said, and I handle them with that church separately. Your engine stays one evergreen toolkit that works the same for everybody.

The multi-site module, facilities calculator, location finder.

Good second-tier ideas. You already have the shape of them.

Database heat mapping and demographic overlays.

You priced this one yourself on the call and you were right. It is a per-church piece, Focus412 refers it, ChurchOps.AI delivers it, and it does not belong inside the engine build.

Essentials Light and the Foundations course.

You told me this is already moving on your side after the retreat. It is not in the build, but say so on the architecture call if it needs to be, because the gating for it is cheap once the engine exists.

The public focus412.com site.

That is Drew and Renee's, and it should stay theirs.

After January

The Phase 2 conversation

We both said there would be one. Better to name a month for it now than to let it arrive in January.

There is going to be a Phase 2.

Ongoing maintenance, new tools as you dream them up, and whatever a retainer or a fractional arrangement looks like once we can both see what the engine actually needs. You said we would find one. I think you are right.

My suggestion: we talk about it in November.

By November the engine is real and we will both know what running it takes. Deciding then means January is a handoff, not a negotiation. Tell me if that feels too early.

Nothing here depends on it.

This scope is complete on its own. If we never have that conversation, you still get a finished engine you own in January, and I still got to build something I have been excited about since Tuesday.

How we will work

The rhythm

Pace, syncs, and what happens when something new comes up.

Build days: half of Tuesdays, all of Thursdays.

That is the pace this is scoped to. I am still an exec pastor. Naming it up front means neither of us is guessing.

A short sync every other week.

More often in Discover, less often in Develop. You are on the road most weeks, so we work around it.

You will see it, not read it.

Every phase ends with something on a screen. I am not going to send you a long document to read.

When something new comes up, and it will.

It goes on the list, or it goes on the next-round list. Both are completely fine. The only thing that is not fine is it happening quietly.

The money, briefly

$15,000 either way. Pick whichever pace fits your cash flow better. There is no discount or penalty attached to either one.

$3,000

a month for 5 months

August through December

$2,500

a month for 6 months

August through January

Either way it is billed at the end of the month, for the work completed that month, and either way the January rollout holds.

You raised cash flow yourself and said a month might need to be smaller. That is completely fine. If it does, we stretch the calendar and not the scope, and you will not be paying me past the work.

Send it back to me

Everything you marked and everything you typed, in one email, in one tap.

Your markup

This updates as you go. Tap the button and it opens an email to me with all of it already written.

Nothing marked yet. Open the sections above, tap Keep or Cut on the tools, and use the note boxes.

Nothing is saved until you send it. If you close this page, your marks go with it.

Next

1. You mark this up.

Keep what is right, cut what is not, add what is missing, send it back.

2. You send me your version.

We put them side by side and keep whatever is better in yours.

3. We get Drew and Renee on a call about the address.

Short call. One decision.

4. We start Discover.

And then you get to watch a wireframe show up.

Our next call

Thursday, August 13. 2:30 my time, 3:30 yours.