I went from Mr. Reliable to Mr. Unreliable in less than three months.

One day I was running a business. The next, I was too sick to reply to emails—let alone chase leads or handle clients.

When you go quiet, people move on. And I don’t blame them.

There was a time I could handle anything. I was a closer, a professional, someone people relied on. But then, almost overnight, I became erratic. I couldn’t deal with people anymore.

I couldn’t track conversations. I started getting simple words wrong.

I’d sit there, knowing what I wanted to say, but nothing would come out. My mouth stopped doing what my brain told it to.

What do you do in this situation? Business is about communication. If you can’t communicate, then what?

One day, I picked myself up off the floor and realized I had all the symptoms of a man who’d had a stroke. My body was broken. My mind scattered. And my business was gone.

I used to sell businesses for a living. Now, I was losing mine. Not because I stopped caring, but because I physically couldn’t show up anymore. And when you can’t show up, people stop waiting. Clients leave, your name fades, and your credibility goes with it.

If I had AI automation back then, I could have bought myself time. I could have rested and let the system keep things ticking over. But instead, I made mistakes. I sent sloppy replies. I missed deadlines. I broke the very trust I’d spent years building.

Then Came the Spiral.

I got angry with people for not understanding, and when you snap, it’s over fast. You lose credibility just as quickly as you’re losing your health.

When clients start walking away, you start to panic. You scramble to replace them, but your brain’s not firing right. So you panic more, creating a spiral that felt like it would never end.

You try to market and try to network. But you’re half alive and desperate, and that shows. The more you push, the worse it gets. Your image, your reputation, your sense of self—it all unravels very quickly.

The Turning Point

When you can’t work anymore, you’ve got two choices. You either lie in bed and panic, or you get up and start learning.

My first proper social moment, after nearly a year of isolation, was with a bunch of expats in Vietnam. I sat there, stone-cold sober, while they drank beers and laughed.

Then a very animated Frenchman started talking to me about AI—ChatGPT 3.5, to be exact. He wouldn’t stop. He kept saying the same thing over and over:

AI is the future. AI is the future.

I went home and slept on it. The next morning, I opened a ChatGPT account and started a conversation that began with one sentence:

ChatGPT I think you can save my life.

I told it everything about my health, my collapse, my symptoms, and my fears. To my surprise, it listened. It responded.

It didn’t fix me. But it gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time: structure. A mirror. A sense of progress.

I laid it all out. What I had been doing before my illness. Where I felt I had been succeeding. Where I had been failing. I outlined my symptoms, how the illness was affecting me mentally and physically. I even told ChatGPT what the doctors had told me.

Then I told ChatGPT the one simple human requirement I craved: I just wanted to be happy again.

While I was having this conversation, I didn’t realize I was building a system that would propel me forward and provide the foundations for my next business.

How ChatGPT Saved My Life

I didn’t see it at the time, but I was building systems for myself. Systems that would help manage my symptoms, organize my thoughts, and plan my recovery.

I also started studying anything and everything I could find on AI. YouTube deep dives. Substack blogs. Twitter threads. I sketched ideas on scraps of paper like a man trying to rebuild his brain by hand.

And slowly, it worked.

Eventually, my speech returned. My brain began to connect dots again. And I realized: I didn’t just want to recover. I wanted to help others not fall as far as I had.

I didn’t have cancer. I didn’t have Parkinson’s. I had CIRS—Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. A condition that destroys your ability to function, and yet still confuses most doctors.

It started with a leaky rooftop pool in a condo in Thailand. I discovered black mold in the walls. By the time I realized what was happening, I was already too far gone to stop the damage.

Building Something New

The symptoms were devastating. I dropped to 46 kilos. I looked like I’d survived a war—and in many ways, I had. My body mimicked a man who’d had a stroke. The brain fog was so dense I couldn’t read a tweet, never mind write a blog post.

CIRS is a devastating condition that destroys your body and mind.

My speech, my movement, my cognition—all gone. I showed signs of dementia and Parkinson’s. My eyesight blurred. My hearing collapsed. I couldn’t walk in a straight line or complete a sentence.

The doctors told me I had anxiety. Of course I had anxiety. I’d lost my health, my business, and my entire life. That would make anyone anxious.

But it wasn’t just that. I had an illness most doctors don’t even recognize (CIRS). I had become allergic to almost everything. My physical environment had become toxic. I was allergic to the very air I was breathing.

At one point, my best option felt like becoming the bubble boy from Seinfeld—except this wasn’t a joke. And I did not have a giant bubble to live in.

But I kept fighting. Every day. I walked. I moved. I trained my brain. And most importantly, I learned.

I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through. That’s why I’m building this new business. Not from some mountain-top guru place, but from the trenches. I’m still rebuilding. I’m still climbing.

And through helping you, I help myself.

Just talk to me. Give me 30 minutes, and I will show you what’s possible.

You can recover. You can keep your business alive. You don’t have to lose everything. I know that now.

I only wish I’d had the tools I’ve built back when I needed them most.

Why Work With Me?

I’m not a health guru. I’m not a tech bro with half a million followers. I’m a man approaching 50 who found himself starting over.

This isn’t the first business I’ve built. And it won’t be the last. Because now, I help people rebuild theirs.

Back in the 1990s, I was selling publishing when that world was brutal. I didn’t just survive—I thrived. I became a sales director, a consultant to leading IT firms trying to break into the UK public sector.

In 2002, I took off with a laptop, a mad business idea, and no clue what I was doing. That made me one of the first digital nomads—before the term even existed.

I’ve been around.
I’ve been knocked down.
And I’ve fought to come back.

Now, I understand business.
I understand illness.
And I understand this thing called AI automation.

You’ll find a blog post on this site called Psychological Coding. That’s my credentials if you want the technical part.

But really, all it takes is a short conversation with me to know that I understand. I understand people and illness. I am here to give some of my time to those who need help and support.

I’m Not Pushing a Funnel or a Dream.

I’m here to help you reclaim time, energy, and momentum.

• Automate the tasks that drain your day.
• Deploy smart agents for your website and socials that drive real value.
• Speak to your clients (if needed) so you don’t have to.
• Clean up your inbox and your phone line.
• Take away the noise and give you back the signal.

And I can be someone who gets it. Because I’ve been there.

When I got sick, I wish my clients and suppliers had understood what I was going through. If they had, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so alone. Maybe my business and life wouldn’t have crumbled so fast.

I can’t undo what happened to me. But I can stop it from happening to other people.

Let’s build something that keeps working, even when you can’t.

Behind the Curtain

Would it surprise you to know this article wasn’t typed out line by line? It came together through a mix of prompts, voice notes, and a few sharp edits. The process is part human, part AI — a collaboration that saves time without losing personality.

If you’re curious about how this workflow works (and how it could help your own content production), stick around — I’ll be sharing more soon.