Case Study · Membership Platform
Tony Kittrell leads The Kannan Group, a business funding and strategic consulting firm with 25+ years helping U.S. businesses secure capital, based in Raleigh, NC. FundingPlan.org - the group’s Fundability Lab - did not exist before this build. We built it from nothing: a free Funding Readiness Score, a gamified free membership with 8 courses and 19 tools, a live community and meeting room, and a full CRM back office - so there is no old site to compare this to, only what got built.
Tony has spent a quarter century helping business owners get funded. None of that showed up online. Here is what was missing before this build existed.
A business owner wondering if they could actually qualify for funding had no way to get an honest, personalized answer without a sales call first.
Nothing built trust before a pitch - no courses on business credit, lender documentation, or how underwriting actually works.
Most business owners are not ready to apply the day they look. With nothing to return to, that interest just evaporated.
A brand-new domain with nothing published yet - invisible to Google, ChatGPT, or anyone asking an AI assistant who can help with business funding.
No CRM, no pipeline, no way to see who was warm, who needed a call, or who had gone quiet.
Nothing on the internet established that Tony has spent 25+ years arranging capital for businesses - just a name people would have to take on faith.
With nothing before it, this build is judged against what a brand-new domain typically ships with, not a fake before-and-after. Every figure below was pulled directly from the live site: the rendered HTML, the robots.txt and sitemap.xml files, and the JSON-LD parsed straight off the homepage.
Measured by fetching the live homepage, robots.txt and sitemap.xml directly and parsing the JSON-LD returned by the page - the same checks we run on every case study, credit given where a typical new site already gets something right.
This is the tool the entire site is built around. A visitor answers seven quick questions about their business - time in business, monthly revenue, bank balance, overdrafts, stacked funding, personal credit range - and gets a Funding Readiness Score out of 100, an estimated dollar range, and the one factor most worth fixing first. No credit pull. No email wall to see the number.
We ran it ourselves as a test case: 5+ years in business, $25,000 a month in revenue, a healthy bank balance, no overdrafts, no stacked funding and strong personal credit. The result: 88 out of 100, “Highly fundable”, with an estimated qualifying range of $19,000 to $55,000 - plus a specific, quantified recommendation showing the range would climb to $20,000–$60,000 with stronger revenue documentation.
The public site exists to get a visitor to the Funding Readiness Score, then to a free account. Tap any page to see the actual screenshot full size.
Anyone who saves a Funding Readiness Score can join free for life. Once inside, they land in a real membership: a dashboard, 8 courses with quizzes and certificates, 19 interactive tools, a community, a live meeting room, badges, levels, a leaderboard and a profile - all built to keep a lead coming back long after the first visit, instead of going cold.
10 distinct member templates in total - dashboard, meeting room, community, courses, individual course lessons, tools, messages, badges, profile and certificates - plus direct messaging between members and Tony.
This is what most website redesigns skip entirely: the system Tony actually works out of every day. It is a real CRM built into the site, not a bolted-on spreadsheet - plus a feature none of our other case studies have shown yet: a marketing kit the platform builds for you.
Every member and their saved score tracked in one list, with 2 calls to book and 22 members active this week at the time of capture.
A logo kit, a brand guide and ready-to-post social graphics, built from the brand config - no separate design request needed.
A dedicated chat-leads tab plus private messaging between members and Tony, separate from the public forum.
The whole member list exports in one click, and Tony can preview the site exactly as a member sees it.
The screen below is not a screenshot - it is the live site itself, loaded right now at phone width.
The iframe above loads the actual production site - what you see is exactly what a visitor on their phone sees right now.
A brand-new domain starts invisible. Here is what was put in place so search engines and AI assistants have something real to read.
A 25-year funding veteran isn’t just a name anymore.
He is structured data Google and AI can actually read.
Every figure above was confirmed by fetching the live homepage, robots.txt and sitemap.xml directly and parsing the JSON-LD returned by the page. We don’t promise rankings - nobody honestly can. We build sites that search engines and AI assistants can actually read.
Here is everything actually delivered, in one list.
A 7-question wizard with a real score, an estimated range and a specific recommendation - no email wall, no credit pull.
Every visitor can join with no paywall once inside.
32 lessons and 40 quiz questions total - members earn a certificate by actually passing at 70% or better.
From a credit utilization calculator to an SBA loan payment estimator and a funding document checklist.
15 badges across 5 levels (Applicant to Fundable), with a real leaderboard ranking active members.
A public forum, direct messaging, and a scheduled live room where Tony answers real funding questions.
Pipeline, calls, community moderation, broadcast messaging, CSV export and more, all built in.
A logo kit, brand guide and ready social posts, generated from the same brand configuration.
Instead of one generic contact form, the site gives each part of the relationship its own door in and its own way to turn a stranger into a lead.
Each card above opens the real, live page - the same one every visitor and every member actually uses.
No made-up traffic charts. Just what is finished, checked and waiting for the domain to be pointed at it.
Because this build has not yet gone live on fundable.the-kg.com, this case study intentionally reports what was built and measured rather than post-launch traffic, ranking or revenue claims.
No website, or a single static page
No way for a stranger to self-assess
No follow-up system for people not ready yet
Invisible to Google and AI assistants
Leads tracked in a notebook or not at all
No proof of experience beyond a business card
A free score, a membership, a community
A real number in under two minutes, no email required
8 courses and 19 tools keep leads coming back
Structured data built for search & AI
A full CRM pipeline in the back office
25+ years of experience, stated on the site
Published pricing puts a custom-built platform with subscriptions, progress tracking and certificates like this at $50,000 to $120,000 from a traditional development shop, and that is before adding gamification or a live community layer, which pushes the range higher still. (Source)
Custom build, or a revenue-share platform
Design
Development
Course & membership infrastructure
CRM setup
SEO work
Hosting
Ongoing maintenance
Every future edit, billed separately
One build fee, one monthly price - all of it included
Complete platform, membership & back office
Hosting & SSL included
Unlimited edits - you text it, we ship it
You own the site and the member data
Search & AI setup, kept current
Compliance-aware copy included
Real human support by text
This was a complex build: a scored lead tool, a full course platform, gamification, a community and a CRM, not just a marketing site. Most builds either have a low or no build fee and a lower monthly fee - this reflects the scope actually delivered.
No existing website required. Text us what you do and who you serve. That is the whole assignment.
A lead tool, a membership, a community and a CRM back office, built around your business, not a template.
You review everything at a private link, exactly like this page, before it ever replaces anything or goes live on your domain.
The questions a business owner actually has before building something like this.
No. There was no prior site. This build started from a blank domain, which is why this case study measures the finished build against itself and against what a typical brand-new domain ships with, rather than an old site.
It asks 7 quick questions about the business and turns the answers into a 0 to 100 score, an estimated funding range and the single factor most worth fixing first. Every result carries a visible notice that it is an estimate, not a credit pull or a lender decision, and that actual terms are set at underwriting.
No, and the site says so on every result. It is a starting estimate built from the answers given, not a credit pull or an offer of credit. Actual funding amount, terms and timelines are set at underwriting and vary by lender.
No. This build proves it. Text us what your business does and we start from there, whether you have a site today or nothing at all.
A lead tool specific to your business, a free membership with courses and tools, a community, gamification, and a CRM back office where every lead lands. See the scope section above for the full list.
This build was $1,000 one time and is $297 a month going forward, which includes hosting, the back office and unlimited future edits. Custom membership platforms with courses and community typically run $50,000 to $120,000 or more built the traditional way.
Most business owners are not ready to apply the day they show up. A free membership with courses, tools, points and badges gives them a reason to come back, so the relationship keeps building instead of going cold after one visit.
AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity are increasingly where people ask for recommendations. If your business is not described in a structured way those systems can read, you are invisible to that whole channel, not just to Google.
It is a hidden layer of your page written for machines instead of people: your business type, services, FAQs and tools, in a format search engines and AI can parse directly instead of guessing from your visible text.
It syncs to their member profile and to their record in the owner's back office automatically, so the score that started the relationship is still there when a real conversation happens.
We cannot promise a specific AI answer any more than we can promise a Google ranking. What we build is the structured, quotable content those systems pull from - the same FAQPage and entity data described in the What Machines See section above.
No. We can draft copy from a short conversation about your business and revise it with you. Photos and a logo help, but a build can start without them.
You keep unlimited edits for as long as you are on the plan - you text a change, we ship it. The back office keeps tracking every lead from day one.
Off-the-shelf course and membership tools are built for nobody in particular. This is built specifically for a business funding brokerage, with the calculator, courses and CRM fields your business actually needs, and you own it.
14 of 20 common questions shown here, plus 2 specific to how the Funding Readiness Score works - a different set than our other case studies, picked for this build.
Tell us about your business. We’ll show you what it could become, even if there is nothing live today.
