You asked for honest feedback on your site and the tech you chose. What follows are some thoughts and additions, offered for your consideration, not prescriptions. Take what's useful, leave the rest.
"Rescue Diver" is the most important certification most divers know they should have. And never take.
The platform exists to fix that. Not just for Rescue. For every cert tier above Open Water. Festival-format training events at scale, across the PADI ladder, with a sponsor pavilion that funds the whole thing and a licensing model that puts these events in every dive market in the country.
An umbrella brand strong enough to support four cert-tier sub-brands now and a national licensee network later. Rescue Diver Ready stays as the safety flagship and the year-one event.
The PADI ladder reframed as a series of earned identities. Each tier is its own sub-brand, its own event line, its own audience. Same festival format, same sponsor pavilion, same licensable playbook.
Cinematic underwater photography. The headline opens with friendship and ambition, not safety-fear. Below the fold: the four-tier ladder, the inaugural event, the founder, the sponsors, the shop, the licensing model. One scroll tells the whole platform story.
One template, works for all four cert tiers. The Rescue Diver Ready Day (FL 2026) version shown here. Notice the "Who it's actually for" section ... inviting the mom who dives twice a year, not just hardcore outdoorsmen.
The current site has no Natalee. This page makes her the foundation. PADI 5-Star IDC. The story of why this platform exists. Sponsors fund people, not URLs. (Yellow tags = TBD with her real bio.)
Real tier pricing ($35K Founding, $12.5K Platinum, $6K Gold, $2K Silver), benchmarked against industry comps. Named underwriting bands ($2.5K Hydration up to $10K Photo). The opening paragraph Natalee uses with a Garmin partnerships director.
Sponsor brands sell at the event AND through the platform. Other dive shops earn 10% of ticket + 5% of gear when they refer customers via their unique affiliate code. Other shops promote our events instead of fighting them.
$3.5K upfront for early licensees ($7.5K post-proof) + 18% revenue share + 12% local sponsor share. An interactive economics calculator at the bottom lets a Phoenix or Seattle dive shop owner run their own numbers. Click the iframe and try the sliders.
Numbers benchmarked. Per-attendee + tier-ratio formulas pulled from real industry comps (FinCon, IRONMAN, niche conference $/attendee benchmarks, OrangeTheory + F45 franchise FDDs). Original council estimates were too high for a Year 1, 100-attendee event. See council/research-pass-2-economics.md for the full breakdown. Still recommend validating with 5 actual dive industry partnerships directors before pitching.
The discipline of doing one thing perfectly before scaling. The June 2026 Rescue event is the proof of concept. Year 2 expands tiers. Year 3 expands markets via licensees.
Sponsors don't just want exposure. They want to sell. Divers don't just want to demo gear. They want to buy. Other dive shops don't want to lose customers to your event. They want a cut. The platform connects all three. One commerce engine, three winners.
Most event-format brands either ignore commerce (Tough Mudder) or fumble it (festival merch tents). The platform-native commerce layer is what turns a 100-diver weekend into a meaningful annual revenue line for sponsors AND a reason for every dive shop in the country to send you their customers. This is the move that makes the platform self-reinforcing.
[Implementation question for Natalee] Native commerce on the platform (Stripe + Shopify-style cart) vs. white-label Shopify. Native is more work upfront but tighter sponsor + affiliate integration. Shopify is faster but harder to plug into the affiliate model. Depends on Year 1 commerce volume she expects.
A handful of moves that might be tempting in Year 1 but could be worth deferring. Offered as suggestions, not edicts. You know your community better than we do.
Matt Gobin does this sort of strategic work and could likely do these five calls. He's a friend of Steve's, knows industry partnership landscape, much better signal than more web research. Worth a 15-minute intro to see if it's a fit.
The vision is built. The mockups are clickable. The brand has a name. The platform is sketched. Whether you build any of it is your call. A few paths to think about.
Take the Claude Code package + the brand kit + the mockups + the playbook. Build it on your own subscription. You own every decision. Faster iteration loop because no one else is in the way.
Cost: your time + Claude Pro/Max + ~$215/mo infra
Timeline: 6-12 weeks depending on hours/week
Hand the brand kit + mockups + spec to any web dev shop or freelance Next.js team. They build it on whatever timeline + budget you negotiate. Steve happy to recommend folks if helpful.
Cost: typical agency $25-75K for this scope
Timeline: 8-16 weeks depending on shop
Steve is in the early stages of building a tool exactly for founders in your spot. You describe what you want, an AI dev team builds and deploys it, and a human with deep IT experience rides along to support the work. Persistent memory, smart handovers, real oversight.
Early stage. Worth a separate conversation if it interests you.
Whatever path you pick, the urgent thing is fixing the checkout. That can happen in a day with a Stripe Payment Link before any larger build starts. The deck and the kit are yours either way.