Negotiator by trade.
Operator by accident.
I never set out to be a growth consultant. I am a negotiator by trade. What follows is the short version of how IGP came to exist, and why it may or may not be right for you.
Jan Potgieter · Founder, IGP
Twenty years. Three builds.
One system.
Twenty years at Imperium Negotiation Solutions. Six months building AI brains for three businesses across three industries. A negotiation consultancy. A coaching firm. An industrial contractor pricing multi-million-rand tenders at 99.7% accuracy. Same method. Same architecture. The longer version is below.
Every business owner I talk to has the same story. Someone told them to use AI. They tried a few tools. Watched some videos. Paid for a course. Maybe hired a consultant who gave them a list of prompts. Six months later, nothing is different. The business still runs on the owner's time, reputation, and relationships. The AI sits unused or produces generic output that sounds nothing like them.
I understand the problem because I had it too. But I came at it from an unusual angle.
I am a negotiator by trade. I have spent the last twenty years at Imperium Negotiation Solutions, teaching and leading dealmaking for companies like bp, Hilton, Pfizer, Vodafone, Nokia, Adidas, and LaLiga. Before that I spent years in enterprise software sales, selling systems to people who already thought in systems. That taught me something I never forgot: software is a slave to business process, not the other way round. Most technology ages badly because it solves the wrong problem first.
I have always loved tech. I never learned to code. Those two things used to be in tension. AI changed that. Now I can build things I used to only be able to sketch.
A few years ago I started building a machine for Imperium. A content engine trained on my own voice. A scorecard that qualified prospects before I wasted time on calls. A website that spoke the way I had spent twenty years learning to speak. A prospecting system that found the right people and started the right conversations. The stack was not revolutionary. It was just mine, and it worked.
Then I built the same kind of brain for another business — an executive coaching consultancy for professional women. Different audience, different voice, completely different market. Same architecture underneath. It worked there too.
Then an industrial contractor asked me for something different. Not a growth system. A brain for their core business process. They needed AI that could read a tender, price it against 274 real costing recipes and 67,000 supplier prices, and produce a quote at 99.7% accuracy. I built it. Same five design principles. Same architecture. Completely different application.
Three businesses. Three industries. Six months. That is when I realised what I had: not a set of bespoke tools, but a method that works for any owner-led business. Growth or operations. Marketing or pricing. Content or compliance. The brain adapts. The method does not change.
So I spun it out. That is what this is.
AI has turned every business function
into an architectural decision.
The real thing I discovered is not "AI does content." Plenty of consultants say that and produce generic output.
The build that used to take a six-figure agency and twelve months can now stand up in thirty days. But the hard part has not gone away. It has moved. The hard part is no longer can we build it. The hard part is what to build, what to reject, and how to make the system survive when the tools underneath it change.
That is a judgement problem, not a tool problem. And it is the kind of judgement you build over twenty years of closing real deals — not twenty years of writing code.
I built it for myself. I built it for a coaching business. I built it for an industrial contractor. Now I am opening it up to others.
Jan.
Twenty years of real dealmaking.
Imperium Negotiation Solutions, the practice IGP grew out of, has delivered dealmaking training and consulting to enterprise teams at bp, Hilton, NHS, Pfizer, Vodafone, John Deere, Adidas, and LaLiga, among others. IGP is the same thinking, productised into AI growth infrastructure for owner-led businesses.
Visit Imperium Negotiation Solutions →The character of the working relationship.
Before any document, before any scope or number, this is how I intend to show up for you. The letter of the agreement is negotiable. The spirit isn't.
Done with you. Not for you.
Every account is in your name. Every password is yours. We log in as users, not landlords. You talk to Jan directly. No account managers in between.
We work in approvals, not reports.
Nothing goes to the public without your yes. Every piece of content, every ad, every email sequence waits for you. Your name, your call.
We are partners in your growth.
If the engine delivers, we both win. If it underperforms, we feel it with you, not above you. The 90-day guarantee exists because we mean this.
You own what we build from day one.
Your domain, your ad account, your email list, your content library. Walk away any time, keep it all running.
Disputes are handled human-first.
If something breaks, the first move is a conversation. Not an email, not a clause. We talk, we find it, we fix it.
We operate the way we would want someone to operate on our behalf.
That is the test every decision about your system passes through.
Jan Potgieter, Imperium Growth Partners.
Answered
The questions thoughtful prospects raise.
Every objection worth answering before a first call. If yours is not here, email [email protected] and I will answer it personally.
Who is Imperium Growth Partners?
Why Jan, not an established agency?
Have you done this for a business like mine before?
Why is IGP cheaper than an established agency?
What happens if something happens to Jan?
Ready to see what the system would
look like for your business?
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