A Founder’s Story — Ai Merchantry™

I didn’t start with privilege. At 19 years old, I walked into the insurance world with

Western & Southern Life, collecting small premiums and learning the value of

showing up. I also started with a broom in my hand, cleaning offices, chasing

invoices, doing whatever it took to provide. From there, I built EastCoast Packaging,

a multimillion-dollar manufacturing company, and even invented a product that

aired on QVC. For a moment, I thought I had “made it.”

While EastCoast Packaging was thriving, I was also distracted—running other

ventures, such as a pizza restaurant, chasing a dream home, and surrounding myself

with things I thought defined success. Looking back, I can see how those choices

pulled me away from what really mattered. And when the crash hit, it all came

tumbling down.

I lost the business. I lost my home. I went bankrupt. And in the middle of it all, my

wife asked for a divorce because I wasn’t earning money. What she never seemed to

ask was, “How are you? What are you thinking?” How are you feeling? How can i help you?

I sat alone for nearly five years in deep depression, something unfamiliar and new to

me —sometimes numbing myself with mindless movies, but mostly clinging to

personal development. I studied the lives of people who had it worse, watched

documentaries on health and survival, and tried to understand the meaning in the

struggle. All the while, I put on over 100 pounds, reaching my heaviest at 325 lbs.

Then one day, I made a decision. One Day. To stop sitting. To stop eating away the

pain. To get back up, eat clean, and move—in the gym and in my mind. I realized I

was outgrowing my family, the five closest people around me. I tried to encourage

and share, but it all fell on deaf ears and closed minds. That decision led me back

into the insurance industry.

The first reason was the positive personal development it fostered—the kind of

growth and encouragement I desperately needed, but wasn’t getting at home.

The second was simple: I didn’t want to start from scratch, building another business

from the ground up, knowing firsthand how lonely and difficult that road can be. So I

chose insurance again.

I found in this business what I needed most—people who wanted to grow, to be

nurtured, and to live with purpose. Through them, I found some success and a spark

of life again. For the first time in years, I began to feel purpose returning.

As I started seeing gaps in the insurance world and the way people were being

misled—often pushed into what most would call an “MLM” model—I knew in my

core this wasn’t me. Not after everything I had lived through, and not while I was

still standing in an unsupported life.

So once again, I chose the road less traveled. I charted a course to build a better

mousetrap—designed with intention and purpose. I found myself back at the

ground floor, building a business, but this time determined to take the missteps and

failures of my past and use them differently. The very things we think disqualify us

are what actually qualify us to help the person we used to be.

All of my successes—and mainly my failures—qualify me to help others. They align

with my life’s calling, by divine intervention and design, and they fuel my drive to

improve the model and design my different and better version of a company I was

working under. I knew I had to rise above it. But when I needed the support of those

closest to me the most, they weren’t there for encouragement. They only wanted

results—the money.

At home, that purpose wasn’t there. My current family life was empty of support,

except for my son—he was the one who stood by me. Although I wasn’t contributing

financially, I was helping where I could. I wasn’t feeding the mouths, but I was

feeding the family’s minds with positivity and encouragement—yet it was never

returned. What I needed, I never received. I saw no gain from staying.

That’s when I realized the hardest truth of my life: I had to leave the one thing I

believed would never end—my family. So, I ultimately, 1 year later, honored my

wife’s request and left.

It was the most heartbreaking decision I’ve ever made. After 23 years with the same

woman and three kids—15, 13, and my son at 11—I walked away. They, the kids,

didn’t deserve their father leaving, but I knew if I was going to make it out alive, and

be good for them, I had to be good for me, and truly find myself, I had to go.

So, I left and moved to Florida, spending long hours on the road with only my

thoughts, my music, my fears, and my tears. I didn’t look back, even as it broke me

into pieces. I kept moving forward.

Eventually, I found myself out of money again, out of options, and with nowhere to

live except my car. Once again, when most would have quit, turned to alcohol, drugs,

or worse, I chose to forge on.

And as I write this today, I still haven’t completely turned that corner. But here I am.

I know I have to make this work. I’ve promised myself—and I’ve promised my

kids—that all of this pain will be worth it in the end. That we will have the rest of

our lives, in their young adult and middle years, to make up for lost time.

Life has a way of bringing you back to where you belong. Thirty-seven years after I first

entered the insurance industry, I found myself here again—not chasing money this time,

but chasing meaning. That return wasn’t an accident. “It was preparation meeting

purpose- a season of my life.”

Out of that fire came Ai Merchantry.

“Merchantry” is an old word for trade, for exchange. For me, it means partnership—

bringing people, knowledge, and resources together with purpose. The “Ai” is not

artificial anything; it stands for Awareness and Intention. That’s what saved me, and

that’s what I now give to others.

Ai Merchantry isn’t just a business I’m trying to make work. It’s bigger than me. It’s

who I am. It’s my life’s mission: to help people live well and leave well™

.

We are building a fractional family-office experience for real people—families,

entrepreneurs, and business owners—uniting insurance, wealth, tax, legal, and

business guidance into one relationship. We don’t lead with products; we lead with

listening. We don’t chase money; we chase meaning.

Every scar I carry reminds me why this matters. I know what it’s like to lose

everything. I know what it’s like to feel judged by your bank account instead of your

heart. And I know what it means to get back up—again and again.

So Ai Merchantry is more than a company. It’s a movement. A place where failures

turn into fuel, and where people matter more than policies, politics, or pedigree. It’s

about people. It’s for those who’ve been overlooked, underestimated,

misunderstood, or told “you can’t.” Because you can.

This isn’t just my story. It’s a blueprint for Life and what financial services should be: honest,

intentional, human, and hopeful.

And for the rest of my life, I’ll be walking this purpose out—helping others find

clarity, dignity, and legacy through the very trials that once tried to destroy me.

“My mission is to nurture people’s natural nature — to help them believe, to make

sure they are seen and heard, never judged, and to guide them into who they were always meant to be.”