Hi all,
It’s been over a year since my last update. While I’ve been quiet on this channel, it’s because I’ve spent that time “heads-down” synthesizing my 15 years of experience building AI platforms and 8 years on the speaking circuit into my first book.
The result is Future Proof: Transform Your Business with AI (or Get Left Behind), which officially launches on March 2nd.
I’ve never been much of a self-promoter, but I’m incredibly proud of how this book turned out because it fills a gap I see every day: it’s a field guide for anyone trying to make sense of what’s happening in AI. It is intentionally non-technical, jargon-free, and written with a bit of humor. This isn’t just for corporate leaders; it’s for anyone looking for a practical roadmap through this “Intelligence Revolution.”
The book launches on March 2nd. I’ll send out the Amazon link once it’s live.
My goal is to get these tools into the hands of as many people as possible. If you’ve found my work valuable over the years, I’d be honored if you would support the launch in two ways:
- Purchase and review: Early reviews on Amazon are the most critical factor in helping the book reach the people who need it most.
- Spread the word: If you’re open to sharing the book with your network on LinkedIn or social media, it would make a world of difference.
To give you a sense of what’s at stake, I want to share the opening story from the book. It’s the case of PetLab, a company that didn’t just “use” AI, but leveraged it to 5x their operational velocity and fundamentally transform their market position.
I look forward to re-engaging with you all and sharing more insights from the book in the coming weeks. Thanks for your support!
Best,
Mike “House” Housman
P.S. Feel free to reply to this email and drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, or just want to say “hi,” any replies go directly to my inbox.
Excerpt: The PetLab Story
In 2022, PetLab found itself at a crossroads. On paper, they were a success story: one of the fastest-growing pet supplement companies in the world. They were poised for massive growth with a subscription-model audience that couldn’t get enough of their products.
But behind the scenes, the foundation was crumbling. With their rapid growth and high demand, the infrastructure supporting their e-commerce platform buckled, threatening a poor customer experience with more downtime, bugs, and a potentially massive collapse. At the same time, PetLab was trapped in a brutal arms race against numerous other pet supplement companies trying to muscle them out by rapidly launching ad campaigns.
The founders, Damian Grabarczyk and Chris Masanto, were staring down the uncomfortable possibility that their fast-growing brand might stall out before reaching its full potential.
That’s when they called in the big guns… me (Hi, I’m House, a classically trained data nerd who stumbled into AI decades before it was popular). My company, AI-ccelerator, parachuted in to stabilize the chaos. We helped rebuild PetLab’s tech architecture from the ground up with a scalable platform designed to handle their growth.
That’s an important story, but it’s not the most interesting one. The most interesting part happened in November 2022, when generative AI broke into the mainstream. Tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney cracked open possibilities that had never existed before in marketing. PetLab saw an opportunity to harness these new AI capabilities to supercharge the company’s marketing and leapfrog past its competitors.
By introducing a few off-the-shelf tools like Midjourney, and showing their designers and marketers how to use them effectively, their creative output skyrocketed.
Honestly, I was blown away by the results. PetLab went from taking about 40 minutes to launch a single ad campaign to just five minutes. That’s not a typo. Instead of a 10% increase in speed, we were looking at 900%. Instead of launching 500 campaigns a month, we were now cranking out 2,200.
And it didn’t stop at speed. The content was also better. Conversion rates climbed. Customers connected more with the ads. PetLab’s revenue grew by 50% year-over-year. Before long, a major private equity firm came in and scooped the company up. PetLab went from “fast-growing pet brand” to one of the biggest and most successful exits in its category.