A driver with a roster, not a level on a ladder
A CobbledWorks Scout does one job. They find people who might buy what we build and bring them to the table. We do the teaching: our products, what we actually build, and how the introduction works.
A scout is paid by a purchase, and by nothing else. That is the whole distinction. The scout works for CobbledWorks and brings us a person who might become a customer. If that person buys, the scout is paid $50, once. If that person later introduces somebody, or sells anything, the scout is paid nothing for it.
How they actually bring somebody in. A scout is given a code, the same way a referrer is. They hand it to a person they know. That person uses it to join one of our weekly seminars online, and we take it from there. Scouts also get their own CRM for outreach, mirroring the one ConnectClub participants use.
CobbledWorks stewards the teaching, and that is deliberate. A system taught secondhand loses its shape, and one taught from the source cannot. Scouts bring the right people to the table; they never run the training.
Tristian picks every scout by name, and every seat is signed on paper. The seat cannot be earned by recruiting, and a referrer cannot climb into it by referring.
Every scout fills out a CobbledWorks Scout application and signs a Scout contract, paper built only for this seat. The same person can also be a ConnectClub participant, on entirely separate paper. Two contracts, two different jobs, and the line between them is deliberate.
One payment in, the whole thing paid out
Every build starts with the customer's $149 activation fee. When that first payment clears, it is what pays for winning that customer.
The referrer's other earnings do not change. They still get their share of the build fee and 10% of the monthly bill, per the published rate card. The scout gets no piece of any of that.
Every door, the same fifty. A website, the CRM, the field tools. There is no per door rate for a scout and nothing arrives in a second piece.
And every third one pays more. Every third person a scout brings in who buys pays that scout $250 on top of the fifty. So their third purchase pays $300, and so does their sixth, and their ninth.
Both figures trigger on the customer's first payment clearing. A scout earns no share of the build and no share of any monthly bill, so nothing about the product itself reaches them.
Every dollar has a finish line built in
This is the part that makes the whole design safe to say out loud. The scout is paid once per person, and recruiting is worth zero.
Joining pays nothing, to anyone
No fee to join, and no payment for signing someone up. A person a scout brings in earns that scout nothing until they buy something themselves.
One level, and there is no second
A scout is paid by the purchase of the person they personally brought in. Nobody that person introduces pays the scout anything. The $50 is paid on the sale itself, so there is no second step to build on.
One person, one fifty: decided, September 14
A person a scout brought in pays that scout $50 the day they buy. Once. Nothing they do afterwards pays the scout again, and neither does anybody they introduce. There is no queue, no clock and no cap. The scout moves on to the next person. Every third purchase pays $250 more, and that is the whole of it.
More drivers to one system, not more layers
Today two salespeople carry every introduction, and one of them is part time. Scouts reach people we would never meet, and every one of those people learns the system from the same source: us.
Here is one scout's year on the decided mechanic. The count of buyers is an assumption, not a forecast. Everything under it is arithmetic.
Nothing fans out. Every dollar traces back to one real person who bought a real thing from us.
The $250 is not the pitch, and we should never pretend it is a job. The pitch is access and standing. One of about twelve names on the program, first look at the network, and pay that follows what their own people buy.
Why this is not an MLM
We do not dodge the question, we answer it. An MLM pays people for building a downline. This pays people for two kinds of real work, and both end.
I scout for CobbledWorks. I find good people and bring them to a seminar. The company does the training. If one of them buys, I am paid $50, once, and that is the end of it.
Say it to a sceptic. No part of it needs an apology, and that is the whole standard.
Two dials open, two decided
Everything above is the working design. Three pieces are set. The $149 as acquisition cost, the name Scout, and the mechanic: $50 once when the person a scout brought in buys, and $250 for every third. Two calls remain, and neither is about the money.
Seat count, and how a seat is won
Start with about twelve appointed names. Then publish a bar a referrer can meet later, with their own closed customers. Nobody can ever earn the seat by recruiting. Or keep it appointed for good.
The bonus: decided. $250 for every three.
Settled by Tristian on September 15, in his words, to stimulate activity. Recurring and uncapped, so a scout's third, sixth and ninth purchase each pay $300. The arithmetic behind the shape is in docs/scout-bonus-threshold.md.
What the first cohort owns
A fee ends. Ownership compounds. If founding scouts get anything ongoing, counsel will want it tied to the company, a fixed founding bonus or a company-level share. A share of anybody else's output would read as a downline override.
The name of the role: decided. Scout.
Set by Tristian on August 19. A scout finds talent and the organization develops it, so the stewardship principle lives in the word itself. Charter Scout stays available for the founding cohort.
- The open dials, seats and founding ownership, are still the operator's to settle.
- We write the Scout paper the same day. An application spells out the role, and a Scout contract is built only for this program. It is a 1099 contractor role, never employment. It is separate paper from the referral agreement on purpose. Both route to counsel in one package.
- CobbledWorks builds and runs the training: the sessions, the scripts, and the first-introduction walkthrough. Scouts bring people to it and never run it themselves, because the system stays with its steward.
- Early near-free builds carry an ask. They pay something nominal that exercises our billing rails, or they hand us a capability we did not have. They also agree to help promote the network.
- Seats are offered in person at the Huge Convention, August 27 and 28 in Orlando.