I want to tell you the real version of how XTRACT Ai started, because the polished version doesn’t help anybody. The polished version says I spent 25 years in sales and marketing, built an agency, learned Ai early and started a company. All true. But it skips the part that actually matters, which is how many times I got it wrong before I got anything right, and what it cost me to finally see why.
The guy who bought one more course
For most of my career I was the guy who bought one more course. Then one more coaching program. Then one more mastermind, one more weekly call, one more tool that was finally going to be the thing. I spent more than $100,000 on one coaching program alone. Add it all up and it’s over $350,000 on programs and coaching, plus a $10,000-a-year weekly call with somebody I thought had the answer.
Every one of those programs was one more thing to do, and I couldn’t do all of it myself, so I hired people to carry it. Over the years I spent more on payroll than I ever took home. Not because paying people is bad. I love building teams. It was because I was doing way too many of the wrong things, for too many different people, at the wrong time. I had a pile of half-built bridges and none of them went anywhere.
And here’s the part I don’t say lightly. I drank the Kool-Aid, and then I went out and sold some of those same things to other people, because somebody told me they’d work. Some of them didn’t. I regret that, and a lot of what I’m doing now is about making it right.
I made an idol out of knowledge
It took me a long time to see what was actually going on, and when I finally saw it, it wasn’t a marketing problem. It was a heart problem. I had made an idol out of knowledge. I kept learning and learning and learning, thinking that if I just found the right framework I’d finally make it, instead of doing the work that was right in front of me.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.James 1:22
That verse wrecked me in the best way. I’d been a hearer for years. I could explain every funnel, every offer framework, every growth model. What I hadn’t done was finish things. The knowledge was never the problem. The problem was that I was using it to avoid the hard, boring, unglamorous part, which is getting real about where you are, picking the one thing that would make everything else easier or unnecessary, and doing it until it’s done.
Where my faith comes into this
I’m a follower of Jesus, and I can’t tell this story honestly without that part. About eleven years ago Jesus rescued me. That’s the only word I have for it. And then, like a lot of people, I spent the next decade striving. I believed, but I was still trying to build my own kingdom with His name on it.
There’s one sentence I keep coming back to: it was never about what I was building. It was about who I was building it for. Everything about how XTRACT Ai works came out of that. You don’t have to share my faith to work with us. You just should know where I’m coming from.
Then two things changed at the same time
The first thing was me. I stopped buying and started building. I got real about where I actually was. I picked the one thing, finished it, and then picked the next one. That’s the whole method, and honestly it’s way less exciting than any course I ever bought.
The second thing was Ai. And I want to be careful here, because there’s a lot of noise about Ai right now and most of it is either hype or fear. What I found is that it’s not the Ai that’s magic. It’s the driver. Ai is the car, and the people who win are the ones who learn to drive it, which has a lot more to do with psychology and communication than with being technical. Everything is moving from skills to words. And I’d spent twenty-five years in sales learning how to say exactly what a business needs, to exactly the person who needs to hear it.
So I started driving it every day. I built my own library of tools for market fit, offers, funnels, content, proposals and websites. I started doing in days what used to take my team months. We rebuilt six sites in a week and a half. We rebuilt a full home services website in about two hours. And for the first time in my career, the speed wasn’t the point. The point was that I could finally finish things, and I could teach other people to finish things too.
Why it’s called XTRACT
Every founder I’ve ever worked with has something in their head that nobody else has. The way they see their customer. The way they explain what they do. The frameworks they’ve built over years without ever writing them down. That’s the most valuable thing in the business, and it’s usually buried, because the founder is too busy running the company to get it out.
That’s the name. We extract your genius so you can bring it to the world. We pull it out of your head, put it into a foundation your Ai and your team actually work from, and multiply it. So the output sounds like you, because it is you.
What I’m building now
XTRACT Ai exists to multiply what founders have been given: their gifts, their talents, their companies and their resources. Too many founders are burying their talent. They’re scared of falling behind, buried in the noise, and too busy to lean in. I know that founder really, really well, because for a long time I was that founder.
So we become your growth team. We build the systems, run the marketing and drive the Ai, so it actually gets done. And then we teach your people to drive it themselves, because Ai should be the reason your team becomes more than they were, not the reason you let them go.
I failed so you don’t have to. Every framework we use came out of doing it wrong first. That’s not a slogan. It’s just the truth, and I’d rather lead with the truth than with a highlight reel.
If any of this sounds like where you are right now, start with a free Ai operations audit. We look at your product, marketing and sales, and show you what to automate, optimize, outsource or hand to Ai. Then I walk you through it. Request your audit here.
