The whole story.
From a chemist’s kid outside Chicago to building with AI. Where there’s a reel, it’s me telling that part myself. Tap to watch.
- Growing up
A chemist’s kid and an ad lawyer’s kid.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. My dad, Louis, was a chemist who developed compounds for new medicines: make a guess, make a lot of versions, test every one. Most fail. You keep what works.
My mom, Mary Lynn, kept big food brands’ ads legal. At our dinner table we talked about what an ad can say and what it has to prove. I still run ads that way: test like a scientist, stay inside the lines. She came back out of retirement to be our lawyer. She’s still my mom.
Real photo · Mom, Dad, Carolina and me - Iowa
Economics, and dreams of Wall Street.
I studied economics at the University of Iowa and dreamed of being a financial trader or an investment banker. Then I found direct marketing, where every ad has to prove it made money.
Film still · AI animation - Booth
Where I learned to track every ad.
My first job was advertising for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Executive Education: filling finance, marketing, strategy and M&A programs with executives and startup CEOs. The Dean of Executive Education, Steve Lacivita, trained me in direct marketing.
I ran $4–5 million a year in ads across every channel, driving more than $20 million a year in revenue. Every brochure carried a personal web link, so every mailer traced back to a sign-up. Our best mailing list came from Harvard Business Review. I took over LinkedIn ads when they were brand new. And I sat in on every class I could and asked the professors what to read.
“I used to have dreams that Harvard had cut us off from that list.”
Film still · AI animation - 2015
I asked to work for free.
My friend Michael Tunney, two years ahead of me at the same schools, had invented KeySmart. While I was still at Booth, I asked if I could run his ads for free.
Facebook video ads had just come out. Within a week, KeySmart’s sales went from $5,000 a day to $25,000 a day. We sold out, and the factory got an emergency order. I said no to the MBA and yes to ads.
Film still · AI animation - KeySmart
Head of marketing. My first hire was the wrong one.
I became head of marketing. Video ads were my specialty, so my first hire was a videographer, Keith. I quickly learned that a camera needs a story, so I hired a copywriter, Alyssa. None of us had written short-form ads before. We learned together, and it was hard, until it wasn’t.
We translated our winning ads into about a dozen languages, and KeySmart grew into a brand doing about $30 million a year.
“It wasn’t just me. It was the whole team.”
- KeySmart
Our best ads cost almost nothing.
We started with big sets, actors and auditions, and the coordination ate us alive: late actors, rained-out shoots, a full team waiting. So we switched to simple, hand-shot videos, close up, showing the product doing its job. Keith often acted in them himself.
- 2020
CleanKey, during COVID.
When COVID hit, we launched CleanKey, a brass tool for opening doors and pressing touchscreens without touching them. It sold more than 19,000 in a single day, made the Daily Herald, and landed on store shelves.
Film still · AI animation - Discovery
Podcast listeners asked for help.
I talked about our ads on Shopify Masters, eCommerceFuel and The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and listeners started asking me for help. That’s how Discovery Marketing started.
One of my favorites: I shot a whole ad for about $200. I wrote the script, hired a videographer for a day, put my own sore feet on camera, and ran it myself.
- 2020
My first AI company lost $100,000.
The Van Gogh Museum gave me an idea: turn a photo of your dog into a Van Gogh portrait. The ads worked, about 5 to 1. The product couldn’t keep up. A three-month build took a year, and I shut it down.
- Out of work
Then the work stopped.
Apple’s iOS 14 update hit direct-to-consumer advertisers hard, and I lost my job. I was out of work for several years. I traveled the world, but it was a brutal, empty stretch. I even dropped out of eCommerceFuel, the founders’ community I loved, because I couldn’t pay the fee.
I don’t hide it. It’s why the rest of this story matters to me.
Film still · AI animation - July 2025
Carolina, and a safari that became a business.
Along the way I met Carolina, and we went everywhere: Paris, Lisbon, even Dracula’s castle. In July 2025 we spent 12 days on safari in Kenya and Tanzania with our guides Reagan, Abdi and Kevin.
Back home, every friend asked how we did it. So I became Reagan’s partner in the U.S. Your happiest customers make your best salespeople.
Real photo · Sunrise over the Mara - 2026
AI got me building again.
I wanted to pitch furniture makers in Mexico, so I made AI videos to show them what I saw. That led me into coding. For me, the first tools got about 80% of the way, then dropped me into the death loop of prompts. Claude Code broke the loop.
Now I build full campaigns with AI: the websites, the films, the ads and the systems behind them.
“I have the full engineering team basically in my computer.”
- Today
AI organizes. People do the work.
Danny builds and edits. Jerry sells. My mom reads every agreement before anyone signs. An AI crew handles the busywork, and it’s always labeled AI. The work keeps growing, and it needs people. So I’m hiring.
Film still · AI animation · the AI crew is labeled AI
Film stills are AI animation of my true story; the painted people are drawn, not photographed. Photos marked “Real photo” are real. The numbers are from my own career.
