Ultimately the model that worked was "I have this tighly scoped project that no one really wants to work on that's completely self contained and is going to req

Ultimately the model that worked was "I have this tighly scoped project that no one really wants to work on that's completely self contained and is going to require a ton of manual work" and hiring contractors to implement your own design. Otherwise if there's a lot of back and forth required or generating a design, forget it. Companies giant and small have tried it and eventually realized "F it" and gone back to in-house teams.