Meet AJ
After spending 8 years in a corporate environment with Intuit I felt lost. I was continuing to grow and get promoted through the ranks, but it was really hard to understand exactly how the work I was contributing was really helping that huge machine. I decided to take a position at Anchor Wave which is the local agency that I now own with Mike Schmidt. At Anchor Wave I was able to work directly with small business owners and I could clearly see the direct impact our strategies and efforts were having on their businesses. This was exactly what I needed in order to go all in on both our clients and our business.
Mike and I spent the last 18 years growing Anchor Wave into a successful and thriving agency, but I began feeling called to do more. Our agency has built over 1,400 sites and managed hundreds of digital marketing campaigns, but our impact was limited to our local area. A mentor of mine told me that if I wanted to continue to grow I had to have more impact. I knew the strategies we had implemented were desperately needed by other agencies and by coaching them we could truly have a global impact. We began teaching our strategies to agencies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and they began using them with their clients. I truly believe small businesses are the lifeblood of local communities and It is extremely rewarding to see how the frameworks, processes and strategies are helping them win.
The truth is that teaching others has motivated us to grow as well. I take pride in the fact that we’ve built our agency to the point that we can still own it, yet not be actively involved in day to day operations. We own a business…not a job and because of that we have the time and financial freedom to spend our time focusing on our new challenge….coaching others to achieve the same freedom.


Want to know more about the Agency that I founded? We have a team of 20 that are dedicated to helping you reach your goals.
My Story
Welcome to Corporate America
I got a job at Intuit doing technical support for Quickbooks
Rounded corners with images, not CSS
Worked swing shift 1-10. Call volume was low and there was nothing to do. The guy next to me was building websites so I asked if he’d teach me. This was straight HTML with tables…a time before CSS.
Webmaster without the title
Started building internal websites for teams at Intuit. These were low priority for IT and would never be created but really helped teams communicate and collaborate. This was not my job, but I began getting more and more requests and my manager would lend me out to other teams.
Promoted to Manager, still doing internal sites
I was promoted to a new position where I was managing a team of 20 tier 3 support reps. I was also still asked to do site after site for teams that needed them
Our AgencyHe’s a web guy he can do it
Since I was known as a web guy and in a management position, Intuit asked me to take on a new initiative…growing their online communities. I eventually went on to manage the online communities for QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax. This is where I began learning about Digital Marketing to grow our communities. In 2 years our team was able to grow a 20,000 member community into a thriving 250,000 member social network that connected small businesses and accountants.
Called for more
Burned out on the corporate life I wanted to work more closely with the people we served. Took a job as a Web Strategist at Anchor Wave
A match made in heaven
Mike and I work extremely well together and compliment each others’ strengths and weaknesses. After helping Mike triple our agency in as many years he asked me to become his business partner
What is a funnel?
Mike and I attend traffic and conversions conference and fall in love with sales funnels and automating parts of our business. We enter high level mastermind groups with Digital Marketer and Russell Brunson
The Value Ladder for Agencies
We discover that the best initial step in an agency value ladder is review management. It’s easy to implement, gets quick results and builds the trust required to ascend to higher ticket services.
Let’s show others
Agency Mastermind is born. Our success with reviews encouraged us to share it with others. We released an online course and it was a huge success. We’ve now run 1,700 students through this course and had begun taken steps toward becoming industry thought leaders
A Bright Future
We finally recognized that our job at Anchor Wave was done. We had slayed all the dragons and were ready for the next challenges that await us. All of our hard work had resulted in what we’ve always wanted…to own and agency, not a job. We now had the time and financial freedom to choose to stop working in the day to day operations with our agency. We decide to pursue Agency Coach full time…launching additional courses and our own mastermind to help others achieve their freedom as well