Hi, I'm Lucas. I'm an entrepreneur, speaker, AI enthusiast, and co-founder at Thought Leaders Institute & Seamlessly.
Started my first business at 13 — an SEO consultancy called SEO PRO. Met my business partner Jim Hohl in high school. Moved to NYC on my last $900 to build our first company together.
I’ve built a solo consultancy, a marketing agency with a team and an office, a global education company, software products, and suites of AI tools.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Married to my husband Leven. Cat dad to Leo. Eagle Scout. Personal development & philosophy nerd. Probably on a mountain (hiking, backpacking, camping, skiing) or halfway through a video game right now.
I speak about and support clients with AI for business (agents, automation, AI-first workflows), scalable systems, customer acquisition, and entrepreneurial freedom. If your audience includes ambitious business owners, I’d love to be in the room.
How I got here
The version of my story that friends like to tell often sounds like: “started his first business at 13, moved to New York with nothing, built a company.” That’s all true. But the version I lived is a little messier and a lot more interesting.
Growing up, I was the kid who never quite fit. I heard all of it. I mention it not because it’s a sad story — it’s not, anymore — but because it explains something important about why I do what I do. The “critics” disapproval motivated me to show that being different could be an advantage, not a liability. I channeled all of that energy into the two things I enjoyed most: technology & business.
At 13, I started my first “real” business — SEO PRO, offering marketing services to local businesses in my hometown. I taught myself copywriting, search engine optimization, paid ads — anything I could find that connected the dots between a business and a buyer online.
While still a sophomore in high school, I was introduced to Jim Hohl through a mutual connection who knew we both did “webby stuff” and thought we should connect. What started as an introduction turned into two years of collaboration and referrals. Jim had a bigger network, more hands-on experience, and had already built and sold multiple businesses. He brought the kind of strategic depth and calm that I — a teenager running on pure intensity and irrational confidence — really benefited from. Our skill sets were complementary, so it just made good sense.
By the time I graduated high school, I had an actual client roster, adult-sized revenue, and a decision to make: go to college, or go build something.
A desire to keep building, see “the big city”, and a new company and partnership with Jim pulled me to New York City. I moved to Manhattan on my last $900 — 3 checked bags, a couch-surfing arrangement, and no backup plan.
in New York City
In 2013, Jim and I officially launched our agency The Thought Leader Agency (originally Visify). We grew it into a global marketing team for coaches, consultants, and online educators. Over the next seven-plus years, I directed marketing and ad strategy for campaigns that drove millions in revenue for our clients — building funnels, writing sales copy, running paid traffic, and learning through sheer volume what actually moves the needle when experts try to grow.
We worked with some of the biggest names in online education and coaching, and we weren’t theorizing about marketing. We were in it every day, accountable for results, iterating constantly.
But by the end of the agency years, Jim and I both felt the pull toward something bigger.
We knew firsthand how to build the systems that transformed our clients’ businesses — and we started to wonder what would happen if we could put those systems in the hands of thousands of entrepreneurs, not just a handful of clients.
Impact at Scale
That question became the thesis for Thought Leaders Institute. Jim and I took everything we’d learned building campaigns for clients and turned it into systems, templates, and training that could be taught and replicated with relative ease — with our coaching and support along the way. As TLI grew, it eventually outgrew the agency entirely. We made the call to go all-in on what was working, and we’ve never looked back.
And we kept seeing the same pattern everywhere: talented experts, hitting a ceiling — not because they weren’t good enough, but because the founder was the entire system. Every sale required their presence. Every client needed their time. Growth meant grinding harder, and they were running out of runway. As my friend and mentor Ryan Deiss would say:
“The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business becomes.”
Most founders don’t have a talent problem – they have a systems problem.
With this in mind, we developed proprietary systems like the Scalable Transformation Method™ and the EvergreenOS™ — processes that help experts move from one-to-one delivery and launch-based selling to scalable, evergreen businesses. Our clients used these systems to fill high-ticket programs, ditch sales calls entirely, and build customer acquisition engines that drive sales every day, without them. Using our own approach… TLI grew to serve over 20,000 students across 100+ niches and 80+ countries.
But the part I’m most proud of isn’t the numbers. It’s the shift in what became possible for our students… Like a health coach who went from overwhelmed with 10 clients to thriving with 140+ clients. Students who took Fridays off for the first time in years. So many of them finally had a business that gave them the freedom they wanted when they started, instead of consuming it… without having to sacrifice revenue, relationships, or client results.
And then AI came along.
The “nerd” side of me always loved the idea of AI. I had researched artificial intelligence and machine learning early in my career. (Mostly how it could impact search engines, and how businesses show up in them.) In summer of 2022, something pulled me back into researching AI. And a just few months later, in November, OpenAI released ChatGPT.
I immediately went deep on AI — not just for fun, but for business. At Thought Leaders Institute, we developed custom AI platform called ThoughtFlow before “custom GPTs” were even a product. AI agents that handled real customer interactions. AI tools that produced professional marketing assets in a few clicks. From that point on – we began integrating AI into every layer of how we operate – without ever sacrificing the human element.
Everything comes back to one goal:
Helping entrepreneurs build scalable businesses that give them freedom, fulfillment, and a healthy paycheck.
The landscape is shifting faster than most people realize. The question isn’t whether AI will change your business – it’s whether you’ll be the one driving that change, or reacting to it.
Disruption comes in cycles — and in 18 years of building businesses, I’ve been through more than one. I know how it feels when the strategies you built on start to stall, or when the industry moves and you’re not sure which direction to run. The key to winning is adapting – quickly – without losing what makes you “you”.
You can see AI’s impact all across the industry today: the strategies that built the online education and coaching space — big launches, phone sales funnels, the “6-figure course” playbook — are starting to stall, or flat out broke. Not because they’re inherently wrong or bad… but because the game has changed.
AI is changing how people think, research, make decisions, and buy products. Buyer behavior is shifting at a pace never seen before. And most entrepreneurs are still running yesterday’s strategies while the market has moved on without them.
That’s what I focus on now. Helping my students and clients remove the bottlenecks limiting growth, install systems that scale without them, and put AI to work in ways that save time, drive sales, and give us all more freedom to go be human.
Then and now. The kid on the left would be pretty excited about where things are headed.
What I'm building now
Want to work together?
Whether you’re exploring coaching, booking a speaker or podcast guest, or just want to swap notes on AI and what’s next — I’m always up for a good conversation.
What I believe
Businesses shouldn’t become irrelevant because the tools changed. I’ve watched it happen — brilliant business owners with decades of experience, slowly losing ground to people half as qualified but twice as bold. The world needs what you have to offer. You just need a system that gets it to the right people without requiring you to be in every conversation.
Grinding harder is a symptom, not a strategy. I’ve seen the burnout cycle up close — in my own business and in hundreds of clients’ businesses. You push harder, it works for a month, you crash, you recover, you push again. The entrepreneurs who break through are the ones who stop optimizing their effort and start building systems that eliminate the need for that effort.
The qualities that make you feel like you don’t fit in are often the exact qualities that make you great at building things. The weird kid who couldn’t stop tinkering with technology is now an entrepreneur who’s helped 20,000 people build businesses they love. That’s not in spite of being different. It’s because of it. If that resonates — welcome. You’re in the right place.