Hey
Dad.

So, apologies in advance. This post may not be for you. It may just be for my dad.

And since he died two years ago, I figured I might as well write to him on one of the biggest platforms in the world.

My dad wrote a song when I was just a baby. Years later, he sang it at my wedding. It was called “My Granny Was a Welder in 1942.”

I won't get into the whole song. Dad, you already know it.

But there's one line:

“She built the biggest battleship this world has ever seen.”

For some reason, that line has been stuck in my head lately. Maybe it's the lack of sleep. Maybe it's because this month is Dad's birthday. I don't know. Things get stuck in my head sometimes.

But I've found myself talking to him a lot more lately.

See, my dad never really understood what I did for a living. If you asked him, he'd probably say, “Sales. Or something.”

And since I've worked from home most of the last 12 years, I'm pretty sure he spent a good portion of that time thinking I wasn't actually working.

I don't know if I ever quite lived up to the lofty expectations he had for me. At least not in a way he could understand.

Most of my professional wins didn't mean much to him because, frankly, I don't think he knew what they meant.

But he loved me. And we were close.

In 2020, Dad suffered his second stroke. It left him with locked-in syndrome. He could barely move or speak.

The doctors gave him three months and wanted to place him in a facility.

We said, send him home.

So we built a hospital room in our house.

My wife, her mom, and some incredible caregivers took on something I don't think any of us fully understood at the time.

We call my wife “Doctor,” by the way, because she literally ended up performing surgeries in our house. But that's a story for another day.

What followed was more than four years of round-the-clock care. Fighting insurance companies, hospitals, medical emergencies, staffing, and a thousand things nobody prepares you for.

We did it because Dad asked us to.

And for those four years, the rest of the world kind of disappeared.

I kept SalesDriver going, with the help of an amazing team, but Dad was the focus.

When he passed away that September, two years ago, I had a lot of recovering to do. I don't think I even realized how much until afterward.

And somewhere in that recovery, I decided to build something.

Really build something.

SalesDriver had been my business for years, but I wanted to turn everything I'd learned into a platform.

Muhammad came aboard as our CTO. Today I call him my brother because that's what he's become. Family.

And for the last two years, we've pretty much lived this thing.

Insane hours. More features. More tools. More capabilities. More problems to solve. More things we decided absolutely had to be built.

Our team has been incredible. People have come and gone, and I'm grateful to everyone who's been part of it.

My wife, Jazmin, has spent a good part of that time asking me the entirely reasonable question, “Have you launched yet????”

She asks so often that she's now part of our meetings even when she's not in the room. Someone asks how close we are, and sooner or later we're talking about what we're going to tell Jazmin.

We're close, Doctor. We really are.

This month, we launched the SalesDriver platform.

And Dad, it's big.

I mean, ridiculously big.

Hundreds of tools, thousands of features, AI agents, and enough technology to make your head spin.

It's the culmination of everything I've learned over more than 20 years in business, combined with two years of building, rebuilding, breaking things, fixing them, and occasionally wondering if we'd completely lost our minds.

And honestly, Dad, I don't think I could explain half of it to you.

But here's the thing.

I guess that's why that line from your song keeps playing in my head.

The last seven years have been a lot.

And no, Dad, the road wasn't ten feet deep in snow, uphill both ways, like your legendary walk to school.

But it was hard. Really hard.

And this month feels different.

For years, it felt like we were fighting to build the ship while the waves were crashing over us.

Now, for the first time, it feels like we actually have a ship to sail.

There's still a whole ocean ahead. Plenty of storms coming, I'm sure. The battle is probably just beginning.

But we've got something to sail through them with.

I wish I could show it to you.

I wish I could explain why I'm so proud of it.

And maybe, just maybe, if you've finally figured out how to turn on your computer up there in heaven, you can take a look.

You probably still won't understand what I do.

But I think you'd appreciate the battleship.

Happy birthday, Dad. Miss you.