Hey, I'm CJ. And my journey started anything but clear.

All signs were pointing to success, so we thought.

It was my first startup back in college. We had a very smart and friendly team, early traction, notable advisors, and interest from incubators. I had designed our entire SaaS advisory platform's mockups. We were energized and moving fast. On paper, everything looked promising.

But when Coviser launched beyond private case studies—it fell flat.

Momentum stalled. Costs climbed. The team lost direction. And the most frustrating part? No one could pinpoint why. It wasn’t until after that I realized the underlying issue: it had no focus. We were very productive, but it was scattered—there was no core brand tying it together.

Its collapse disheartened me. But it became a revelation: even with great people and ideas, the success of a company hinges on the clarity of its communication. Coviser didn’t fail for lack of effort—it failed for lack of focus on what mattered most.

Lesson:“A strong brand is the strategy that bonds everything together.”

From Explorer to Expert

The instinct of constant curiosity, strategy, and activation that fueled me during Coviser has existed since childhood across a range of interests that my beloved parents encouraged me to explore. They shaped who I am today.

At six years old, I was selling candy, and later, I sold printed products door-to-door, asking my mom to drive me blocks away so I could “sell my way back home.” For twenty years, I competed in nine sports where I learned the value of being coached and coaching others. For six years, I designed a dozen move-in-ready virtual estates for fun as a teenager. I overcame the odds throughout thirteen years of persistent practice to become a top string bassist in California who toured the U.S. and three world tours to China and Japan by 17 years old. Later, I found success in the gig economy in multiple categories, including hosting over 90 guests from around the world at my home.

For years, they each seemed like siloed interests—but eventually, I saw the deeper theme. These were not just passion pursuits. They were the building blocks of something bigger: the desire to decode patterns of success in disconnected disciplines with the insight to integrate them.

Lesson:“Curiosity, when channeled, becomes capability—and eventually, confidence.”

From Consultant to Communicator

With those extensive life lessons and my profound realization from Coviser, I then invested over half a decade as an independent consultant. I worked in the trenches while helping visionary founders and execs across every marketing discipline and every stage of the startup lifecycle.

This was in part made possible through my nurtured network while I co-led over 160 events for founders over six years that built Silicon Valley’s third-largest startup community with 21,000 members.

Over time, I launched three startups within various parent companies, helped self-made business owners to brand their new startups, co-led tradeshows, launched successful crowdfunding campaigns, perfected dozens of pitches for founders globally as a mentor with a top tier accelerator, co-led a design studio’s dozens of startup projects, and gained buy-in for pitches through my content from a range of VCs and a handful of billionaires.

Some projects crashed. Others thrived. I was even awarded among a few thousand applicants as a Top 100 Marketer in the U.S. before my 10-year mark since graduating from Pepperdine.

I honed my mindset, mantras, and methods on what made brands succeed—or not.

I finally felt ready to co-found my second startup.

Lesson:“You do not need a bigger budget—you need a significant signal”

Taking the leap as a serial founder

After extensive consideration, I co-launched Chatfully with a valued friend. This time, the intent was more focused, grounded branding.

It changed everything. Its connected messaging increasingly intrigued our category of buyers faster, I constructed its sites that rose it to the top of search engines, co-launched its apps, united with partners who exposed us to our market in dozens of countries, onboarded thousands of small businesses, and scaled omnichannel communication for teams across industries.

Eventually, strategic divergence of prioritizing platform vs promotion was what convinced me to exit from Chatfully on good terms, where it reoriented towards its next generation of users.

Lesson:“You don’t need more hustle. You need focused delivery behind a united brand signal.”

Ecosystem-level realization

After Chatfully, I stepped back to consider the eventual legacy I wanted to leave, which turned into an exhaustive exploration over a three-year journey. I immersed myself by annotating over 100 business books, over 5,000 expert podcast interviews, and modeled patterns in branding, flywheels, team leadership, psychology, and beyond, consulted, and even practiced my passion for nature photography. Collectively, I wrote well over 5 million words to codify it all in quickly accessible and proprietary formats.

And, without warning, the next mindset shift finally clicked: my core driver is clarity, applied as a strategist, for visionaries. And, I finally figured out how to fulfill it through an ecosystem.

That insight reframed my past and focused my future identity. I saw how every key experience pointed toward this. It became clear that I am best positioned to support visionaries, with my foundational mindset of a strategist, and through the core principles of cohesion and connection.

My mission crystallized to help brands worldwide become their category’s clear choice ™.

Lesson: “The most powerful people are forged from having lived through and overcome chaos—focus becomes the reward.”

Now: Contribution that compounds

Today, I champion that mission—refined from a lifetime of exploration and over a decade of brand experience—through my System for branding that leverages people-AI workflows in an ever-improving integrated ecosystem for a company's full lifecycle: hands-on Courses to finish pressing projects, tailored private Coaching to scale focus, Speaking to shift how your community thinks about brand leadership, a Newsletter to find market fit, and more. I invite you to explore.

Your vision deserves validation through becoming adopted in communities worldwide where it matters most. Let’s make it possible.

Lesson: “The most powerful brand you can build is one that expresses your essence, aligns your ambitions, and empowers others along the way.”

A transformation from within

Discover how my System clarifies your brand to increasingly position it as the clear choice.