It All Started with an Online Yahoo Pool Bot
It’s funny how the big projects in your life rarely start with a grand plan. More often than not, they’re sparked by something small, something personal. For me, the journey to creating this all-in-one marketing suite didn’t begin in a Silicon Valley incubator or a university computer lab. It started in my dad’s garage, surrounded by a chaotic symphony of spare computer parts, and was fueled by a moment of pure, unadulterated rage over a game of Online Yahoo Pool.
I’ve always been a nerd; there’s no getting around it. My dad was an engineer, and our house was a playground of hardware. While other kids were outside, I was happily sorting resistors or helping my dad with some random project. My first real taste of creation came when I built a website for my mom’s restaurant using Microsoft Front Page. Seeing something I built exist on the internet, helping her business? I was hooked.
But the real turning point, the moment that unknowingly set the course for my entire career, came in 2004. I was 14 and considered myself a pretty serious Online Yahoo Pool player. One afternoon, I was in an online chatroom game, and I got cheated. Blatantly. Someone was using a bot to run the table on me, and I was furious. It wasn’t just about losing; it was about the unfairness of it. My competitive, nerdy brain couldn’t let it go.
So, I did what any reasonable, tech-obsessed teenager would do: I channeled that anger into a mission. I decided I wasn’t just going to make a bot; I was going to make a better one. I dove headfirst into the world of VB6 and C++, spending countless hours hidden away in the corner of the garage, devouring every book and forum post I could find on programming. Within a year, I had done it. My bot was faster, smarter, and more precise than anything out there. I became something of a legend in the Online Yahoo Pool world.
Even though other people were selling their bots in forums, I never charged a dime for mine. I was 14; I didn’t know anything about business. I just wanted to be number one, and giving my tool away for free was my way of leveling the playing field.
That experience—of identifying a problem and building a solution from scratch—became my calling card. After my reign as the teenage king of Yahoo Pool, I started applying those skills to the real world, building websites and custom software for restaurants, small businesses, warehouses, real estate agents—you name it. In every corporate job I held over the next 12 years, I couldn’t help myself. I was always the guy writing a script or building a small tool to automate a tedious process, just because I knew there had to be a more efficient way.
While the corporate world was fine, I found my real passion in helping people who weren't tech-savvy. I loved empowering small business owners to amplify their efficiency. My technical skills grew, and I picked up Photoshop, falling in love with the creative side of branding. Soon, I was a one-stop shop, designing logos, business cards, flyers, websites, and even merchandise.
My freelance client list exploded. For a while, I felt like Superman—working my 9-to-5, then coming home to a full roster of clients. I was driven by the desire to make everyone happy, to deliver amazing work for every single person. But that drive came at a cost. The work/life balance I thought I could manage became non-existent. The long nights and weekends spent in front of a screen started to blur together. I was getting sick more often, the burnout was real, and things were starting to go downhill. It wasn’t just affecting me; it was affecting the people I cared about. My loved ones were getting the exhausted, stressed-out version of me, and that wasn’t fair to them.
I knew something had to change. Reluctantly, I decided to stop accepting new clients. But I couldn't just stop creating. Instead, I turned my focus inward. I asked myself:
"What if I could build a tool that does what I do, with my style, my eye for design, and my obsession with efficiency?"
That question became an obsession. I realized that to do it right, I couldn’t treat it like a side project. It needed everything I had. So, I took a leap of faith: I quit my job, betting on myself and living off my savings to bring this idea to life.
What followed was 12 months of the most intense, daunting, and rewarding work of my life. Long days turned into sleepless nights as I wrote, debugged, and refined over 14,000 lines of code. The result is Autom84You.
It’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned since that first bot. It’s a system designed to automate the hustle without sacrificing quality. When it was ready, I had some of my old clients test it, and their feedback was incredible. They were getting the same high-quality results, but faster and with more control.
Now, I point most new inquiries to this platform. I still take on a few full custom branding projects, but seeing my clients—both old and new—thrive using this service has been more satisfying than I could have imagined. They’re happier, their marketing is more powerful, and I’m finally, happily, mentally and physically well. This platform isn't just a product; it's the solution I had to build for my clients, and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with you all.