How a Las Vegas Business Coach Built a $25,000 Youth Entrepreneurship App for a Fraction of the Cost

Brandon Ward runs The WE Mentality, a five-person coaching business in Las Vegas that he has been building for five years. He works with organizations on professional development, team development, and leadership development, and he helps owners systemize their companies so they can scale, win contracts with state agencies, and eventually sell. He is a leadership provider for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Alongside the coaching work, he writes books and runs a youth entrepreneurship program called the Lemonade Stand Business Plan, which he takes into schools over summer and spring break to teach kids business, teamwork, and leadership.

Two parts of that business were stuck. He needed one page per contract that spelled out what his team could deliver, so clients could get their answers there instead of on a call, and the youth program needed to run as an app. His website was built on Wix by an outside company, and changing it meant hours Ward didn't have. The app was a developer's job. So he described what he wanted to Emergent and it built both: the contract pages, and the app behind the Lemonade Stand Business Plan.

Challenges

No bandwidth to update the Wix site

The WE Mentality's website was built on Wix by an outside company. Then the contracts changed what Ward needed from it. He holds a leadership provider contract with UNLV, and he had a capability statement written for it. He wanted a page built around that one contract so he could solicit additional training inside the agreement. Building it himself on Wix meant a few hours at the keyboard. "I really don't have the capacity right now at this stage of where I am in my business," he said.

Every contract question answered by a phone call

Without pages built around each contract, the questions came to him. Sales calls, marketing calls, back and forth with institutional clients who wanted to know what else his team could deliver. That work sat on Ward and a staff of five.

The usual fix is to hire. A business development person to open doors, a salesperson to work the pipeline. For a coaching business that also gives away programming to schools, that is a payroll line that has to justify itself fast.

A youth program app priced at $25,000

The Lemonade Stand Business Plan needed software, not a brochure. Ward wanted students learning inside an app, video built into the lessons, and a back end collecting the data he needed for grant and funding applications. He doesn't write code, so the app meant hiring a developer. By his own estimate, that would have run about $25,000. "It wasn't just the building of the app, it was the coding. It was the things that I didn't know I needed to do to connect the back end," he said.

Time was the bigger problem. In his experience, a website developer takes at least two weeks on a site. An app with a front end, a back end, data collection, and video would have taken two months.

Solution

From capability statement to live page in 20 minutes

Ward had credits left over from another Emergent project, so he tested it on the UNLV page. He handed over his capability statement and his branding and asked for a page built around the contract.

What came back was the full page, ready to deploy. He built two more the same way. The pages answer client questions and open the door to additional training inside an existing contract, without a call. That first page took about 20 minutes in total, deployment included. "It knocked it out the park," Ward said. "It was easy and fast."

An app for the Lemonade Stand Business Plan, built by describing it

The bigger build was the youth program, now live at learn.lemonadestandbusinessplan.com. Ward described what the program needed and Emergent built it:

• A front end. The side of the app students use.
• A working back end. The part he was least equipped to build himself, connected and functioning.
• Data collection. The app tracks what he needs when he goes after grants and funding.
• Video inside the lessons. He wanted videos in the app but didn't know how to add them. Emergent walked him through it.

The curriculum behind all of it came from years of running the program in schools: entrepreneurship, teamwork, leadership, and the personality assessments Ward uses to help kids understand their strengths and the people around them. Emergent kept proposing additions as the build went on. "It'll keep on asking for enhancements," he said. His takeaway was that the more direct he was, the better it worked.

Ward has used the app generator Google offers through Gemini. He found it wasn't as smooth or as easy.

Outcomes

A $25,000 app built for a fraction of the cost

Ward's own estimate for building the Lemonade Stand Business Plan app the traditional way was about $25,000, driven by the coding and the back end connections he didn't know how to specify, let alone write. He built it on Emergent for a fraction of that.

Two months of developer time done in two to three weeks

A developer would have needed two months. Ward finished in two to three weeks, working from a vision he already had worked out.

$1,500 to $2,000 saved on the contract pages

Ward put the cost of taking that page work to an agency at a minimum of $1,500 to $2,000. He did it himself on Emergent.

Two hires he no longer needs to make

The pages sell the additional services he used to pitch by phone. "It has taken away another business development person and another salesperson, because the site sells itself," he said.

Conclusion

The app gave Ward access he said he could not get before. Schools take the program at no cost, which puts him in front of the educators he sells to later, and the app has become his introduction: he sends the link by text or posts it on social media, and meetings now come in every day. It also earned him a top tech award in Nevada, which he credits to the app and the vision behind it. The program is piloting in Nevada with plans to run nationally, and he is looking at other countries, something he says he never considered before he had software to carry it. Five years into running a coaching business, a free app for kids turned into his best sales channel and a new professional identity. "I never even saw myself as a tech guy, but now I'm the tech guy," he said.

If the software you need has always been the thing you couldn't afford, Ward was in your position: a five-person team, no coding background, and a $25,000 estimate for the app he wanted. He didn't hire anyone. He described what he wanted, got more direct when Emergent kept suggesting more, and finished in two to three weeks with an app that now brings him meetings and makes him look better than his competition. Whatever you have already written down, a capability statement or a curriculum or a process you still run by hand, describe it the way Ward described his.

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