The Market Spoke. I Listened.
How a $5,000 AI cert course, four veterans, and a Sunday night turned into a real product.
A few weeks ago I was giving my weekly presentation at 7 Eagle when one of the Skillbridge students mentioned he had paid for an AI certification course. My ears perked up. I asked him to book time with me. I wanted to know what was in it.
The following Thursday we met. He was bitter. Angry. In 30 minutes he learned more than he had from the entire $5,000 course, and he knew it. I don’t say that to brag. I say it because I knew the right questions to ask him. That’s the whole game. After the initial 30 minutes I spent extra time helping him reframe it, because he’s not getting that money back and there was real value buried in what he bought. We just had to dig for it.
That conversation stayed with me.
The next Friday I’m doing my weekly talk at 7 Eagle. It started as me just telling veterans the truth about what transition actually looks like. No sugarcoating, no pitch, just reality. But over time it’s shifted. AI is now half the conversation, sometimes more. Because if you’re about to get out and you’re not thinking about how to leverage these tools, you’re already behind.
I told the group that story. Four people in the room asked me the same question: do you have any kind of training they could go through?
I said no.
Then I asked: if I put something together, would you pay for it?
All four said yes. Take my money.
That’s the market speaking. When the market speaks, you listen.
I talked to Tyler Grant, the CEO of 7 Eagle, that same day. He didn’t hesitate. “You know this stuff, you’re already speaking to these people every week, build it.” Green light.
I tried to leave the weekend alone. I’m intentional about that. There’s a version of entrepreneurship where you grind every waking hour and burn yourself down, and I’ve been there. That’s not the move.
Sunday evening I was at my laptop just messing around, and something clicked. I opened up an AI tool and started sketching out what a real course could look like.
I didn’t stop.
Sunday evening to Thursday at 10 PM, I built the entire thing. All four modules. The business plan. The business model. The assessment framework. The whole structure. Right before I finished the last module, I stumbled onto another AI tool that changed how I’m thinking about all of this. That’s a story for another post.
The course is done. What’s left is recording the content, building the landing page, setting up the waitlist, and choosing the platform. In less than a week, using AI, I went from “no, I don’t have a course” to having a real product.
Somewhere in all of this, I also migrated my entire email list and set up this Substack. Six hours. Three hundred and forty-nine people moved from my old platform. Set everything up, optimized it, drafted the first post, imported a separate batch of podcast guests who agreed to be on my list but never made it into my original setup. Four hundred and eighty-one subscribers.
I want to be straight with you about that number: AI didn’t build those 481 people. Two years of showing up, speaking, posting, podcasting, and giving a damn about veterans in transition built that. What AI did was compress six hours of logistics into something I could execute at midnight without wanting to throw my laptop.
That’s the distinction. AI is a force multiplier. It’s not a substitute for the work you’ve already put in.
So here’s what this Substack is.
I’m building in public. Not the polished highlight reel version, the actual thing. The tools, the decisions, the process, the wins, the stuff that doesn’t work.
I am the veteran market. Thirteen years. Four deployments, three to Iraq, one to Afghanistan. I’m not consulting for veterans from the outside. I am one, figuring this out in real time. The difference is I’m going to document it, so you don’t have to pay $5,000 to learn what I already know.
Posts will be sporadic. When something is worth saying, I’ll say it.
When I get the paid side set up, I’ll drop my exact methodologies, my frameworks, Loom videos of the things that genuinely blew my mind, and the real behind-the-scenes of how I’m building this. The tools, the workflows, all of it. But you’ll have to invest in yourself to get there, because that’s the only way any of this actually works.
The free stuff will be real. The paid stuff will be the playbook.
This is Monday. I’m calling my shot.
My name is Adam Peters, and I’m here to unfuck the transition.
Welcome.