Two weeks before we launched The Tech Wizards, we were wondering if we could keep our home.
Seriously.
Our main source of income had essentially disappeared. The business Sophia and I had spent years helping build had gone from thriving to almost completely stopped.
No events on the calendar. No income coming in.
There were no future events on the calendar.
No reliable income coming in.
My dad, who owned the business, had disappeared in Tijuana after being robbed and losing virtually everything he had with him.
On my birthday, instead of celebrating, I was filing a missing-person report with the American consulate trying to find my father.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Sophia and I were having a very different conversation:
- What are we going to do now?
- Were we going to be able to keep our home?
- Were we going to have to move back in with our parents?
- How were we going to replace our income?
- How were we going to help my dad get back on his feet?
We didn't know it yet, but that disaster was about to completely change the direction of our lives.
Because less than two weeks later, we had built and launched an entirely new business, landed our first major paying client, had new leads coming in, and had other people signing up to help us generate even more business.
And that was just the beginning.
But the story actually started years earlier
Before I became a Tech Wizard, I worked in film and television in Hollywood.
Eventually, I left that career to help my dad with his event business.
And when I first got involved? The business wasn't exactly a technological wonderland.
My dad was a great promoter, though. He had learned how to pack events using the tools that worked at the time: newspaper advertising, direct mail, postcards, mailing lists, phone calls, and a whole lot of old-fashioned hustle.
And it worked.
Until it didn't.
Technology was changing.
The internet was changing how people discovered things.
Newspaper advertising became less effective.
Direct mail became more expensive.
Consumer behavior was moving online.
The strategies that had built the business weren't going to keep building it.
We had to learn a new way.
Then Sophia came along
Sophia brought something the business desperately needed: a natural understanding of marketing, branding, design, and what actually makes people stop and pay attention.
Together, we started experimenting. We learned social media advertising. We built better websites and landing pages. We improved the customer experience. We learned marketing strategy.
I became increasingly obsessed with the technology and systems behind everything.
How could we automate this?
How could these pieces of software work together?
Why were we doing this manually?
Could we build something better?
Sophia focused heavily on the marketing and creative side.
I gravitated toward technology, software, systems, and automation.
And the combination worked. Really, really well.
We helped turn the business into something completely different
Before
1 day
30–50 exhibitors
After
2 days
50–100 exhibitors
Scale
~4×
the former size of the business
Sophia's social media marketing became one of the biggest drivers of attendance.
We built better websites, better systems, and better processes.
The events became consistently busy. Booths frequently sold out in advance. Exhibitors came back because the shows brought them customers.
And because producing events is really a B2B business, our work wasn't only helping my dad. Over the years, those events helped thousands of small businesses get their products, services, and expertise in front of new customers throughout California.
We learned how marketing, design, technology, operations, and customer experience all fit together.
Eventually, the events developed one of the strongest reputations among exhibitors in their niche in California.
It had taken years.
But we had built a machine.
And then the machine lost its captain.
My dad's health and personal circumstances had become increasingly difficult.
Then came Tijuana.
He was robbed.
His van was gone.
His wallet, identification, passport, cards, phone, and computer were gone.
For a period of time, we couldn't even find him.
Without his phone, he didn't have the numbers he needed to reach the people who normally helped him.
Banking problems followed.
Events stopped.
Managers left.
Future shows weren't being booked.
The business Sophia and I had spent years helping grow suddenly wasn't a dependable business anymore.
It was an extraordinary feeling.
We had spent years figuring out how to get the ship moving faster and faster.
Then one day we looked around and realized...
the ship had completely sunk.
And unlike an ordinary job, there wasn't another employer handing us a paycheck on Friday. We had to figure something out. Fast.
Then Sophia said something that changed everything
Around this time, Sophia had been following the story of a businesswoman who became seriously ill. She had to spend an extended period essentially running her company from bed.
So she started figuring out how to use AI to do more and more of the work. She automated processes. She reduced busywork. She changed the way the company operated.
And instead of the business collapsing, something unexpected happened.
It became more efficient. She worked dramatically fewer hours. And the company became even more successful.
Sophia looked at what was happening with us and said, essentially:
“What if we learned how to do that?”
We already knew marketing.
We knew design.
We knew strategy.
We knew websites.
We knew software.
We knew systems and automation.
We knew how real businesses operated because we'd spent years in the trenches actually running one.
What if we added this new generation of AI to everything we already knew?
That question changed our lives.
So we went back to school
Years earlier, we'd learned a lot from Russell Brunson's work on online marketing and sales funnels. Now he was teaching an advanced course on using AI in business.
It went deep into AI workflows, automation, tools, coding, and what this new technology could make possible.
Fortunately, we'd been students of his work for years. We had the foundation to understand it.
And something clicked. This wasn't just about asking ChatGPT to write an email.
We started seeing AI as an entirely new layer that could connect and amplify everything we had spent years learning.
Suddenly, one or two people could do things that previously required an entire team.
AI wasn't replacing all the skills we'd spent years learning.
It was multiplying them.
In less than two weeks, The Tech Wizards was live
We needed a new source of income. So instead of spending months writing a business plan, hiring people, developing a brand, building a website, creating offers, setting up systems, developing software, and eventually launching...
we started building.
We used everything we already knew, amplified by everything we were learning about AI.
Not just a website. A functioning business.
All of it. In less than two weeks.
A real customer. Real money. Within about a day.
We didn't launch some enormous advertising campaign.
We emailed and texted a few friends, previous clients, and businesses we'd worked with before. We made a few phone calls.
And within about a day of beginning to promote it, someone bought one of our larger build packages.
A few emails and texts
Friends, previous clients, businesses we knew.
A few phone calls
No ad spend. No launch campaign.
~1 day
First major paying client.
Then momentum
More conversations. More leads. Referrals.
We created an affiliate program. People started signing up to actively help bring us new customers.
The thing that had begun as “How are we going to survive this?” was becoming:
“Wait… what else could we build?”
And that's when things got really interesting
Our productivity exploded. Ideas we'd been talking about for years suddenly started becoming real projects.
Things that once would have stayed scribbled in a notebook under Someday started moving into development.
And we realized something else. There are millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners sitting on their own versions of those ideas.
They're still doing things manually that could be automated.
They're paying for five pieces of software when they might need two.
They have an idea for an app but assume custom software is impossibly complicated or expensive.
They're overwhelmed by AI because there are twelve new tools every Tuesday.
They know their business could run better.
They just don't know what's possible yet.
We do. Because we'd just lived through the transformation ourselves.
The exciting part isn't faster emails. It's leverage.
A small business can operate more like a big one.
One entrepreneur can suddenly have capabilities that once required an entire department.
A tedious process that eats ten hours every week can disappear.
Marketing that constantly demands attention can become automated.
An idea that's been sitting on the shelf for five years can become an actual working product.
And people who don't consider themselves “tech people” can suddenly build things they never imagined they could build.
That's what happened to us.
We went from wondering whether we could keep our home…
to building and launching an entirely new business in less than two weeks.
And now we help other people create their own version of that transformation.
Sometimes I coach someone on how to use AI to become dramatically more productive.
Sometimes Sophia helps a business rethink its marketing, branding, design, or strategy.
Sometimes we automate the thing everybody in the office hates doing.
Sometimes we rebuild a website.
Sometimes we build or connect the systems behind a business.
Sometimes we create an AI assistant.
And sometimes someone walks in with an idea and says:
“I wish there were an app that could…”
Those are some of our favorite conversations.
Because increasingly, the answer is:
There can be.
We know what it feels like to have everything change
The Tech Wizards wasn't born because we sat around trying to think of a clever startup idea. It came out of one of the most frightening and uncertain periods of our lives.
Something we had depended on disappeared.
So we took everything we'd learned over years of building businesses, marketing events, creating technology, designing systems, solving problems, and making things work…
and combined it with an entirely new generation of tools.
It changed what we believed was possible.
Now we get to help other entrepreneurs experience that same epiphany.
Because somewhere inside your business there may be a process that shouldn't exist anymore.
A problem technology can solve.
An idea that's much easier to build than you think.
A business that could run with far less effort.
Or something you've wanted to create for years but assumed was out of reach.
Ready to make your tech work for you?
Book a free 15-minute call with one of our wizards. Tell us what's working, what isn't, and where you'd like to go. We'll help you figure out the smartest next step. No pressure. Just clarity.
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