The story
Houses first. Then the water.
My first company cleaned houses. Elite Suburbs taught me the lesson every service owner learns fast: if the work stops when you stop, you don't own a business. It owns you.
In 2008 I started selling water filtration. I had customers before I had a website. That business grew into RKIN, and I've run it ever since.
In 2022 we turned years of customer feedback into our own countertop reverse osmosis system and took it to Kickstarter with a $20,000 goal. 271 backers pledged $150,625. That's the top 2% of all Kickstarter projects ever launched, and the top 4% of the ones that got funded.
Then came AI. I now run 20 automations for myself. One preps every meeting on my calendar at 5:30 AM, so I walk into each one already knowing the backstory. Another researches every podcast host before I record. A coaching agent checks in five times a day to see if I kept my commitments, and it's blunt on purpose. They do the prep. I make the calls.
And I still pick up the phone for customers. Some jobs you keep.