The insurance industry was heading for massive disruption, and I knew it. As AI technology rapidly advanced, I could see that insurance, along with many other traditional industries, was about to change forever.
Instead of waiting for that wave to crash over me, I made a decision that would completely reshape my career: I sold my insurance business to stay ahead of the curve.
This wasn’t just about escaping a sinking ship. I genuinely believed that getting proactive about industry disruption beat being reactive every time.
So, after selling, I spent the next year building Zeel AI, a white-labeled AI platform. It felt like the logical next step. If AI was going to transform everything, why not help create those solutions?
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Perfect Storm of Opportunity
While I was deep in AI development, life at home was shifting too. Both kids had left for school, which meant my wife suddenly had time on her hands. We live in what happens to be the fastest-growing county in the United States, literally surrounded by some of the fastest-growing cities in the country. My wife wanted to work from home and try entrepreneurship on her own schedule.
That’s when I remembered something I’d seen on X a couple of years earlier: local newsletters. I’d filed it away in the back of my mind, but suddenly it clicked.
Here we were, living in a booming area where people constantly asked the same questions: When is Costco finally opening? What’s happening with that freeway construction? What are the best new restaurants?
The information was scattered everywhere: random Facebook comments, different websites, various event platforms. Who wants to spend their day scrolling through Facebook groups, sifting through arguments about bad driving, just to find out when the local farmers’ market opens?
From One to Many
We launched our first local newsletter about eight or nine months ago. The concept was simple: curate all the information people actually care about in their immediate area and deliver it in a fun, digestible format that takes five minutes to read.
The response was immediate and overwhelming. People were starving for this kind of hyper-local, curated content. A couple of, months later, we started a second newsletter. Then business owners in my network began reaching out, saying they wanted to do the same thing in their areas but didn’t know where to start.
That’s how the partnership model evolved. We now have four newsletters total with two partners, and we’re launching a fifth next week.
But the real game-changer is InboxScoop, the new company I’m launching with a partner who’s a sales expert. We’re planning to launch six to ten newsletters simultaneously across different regions, aiming to reach thirty locations this year.
The Suburban Strategy
Here’s what sets us apart: we’re not trying to compete in major cities like Austin, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Those markets already have established local media companies, and frankly, they’re too broad. If you live in Chicago and read a newsletter about Chicago, half the content covers events an hour away from you.
Instead, we focus on larger suburban areas. It’s less crowded, more valuable to readers, and we can get incredibly granular. When you’re covering a smaller geographic area, everything you include actually matters to your readers because it’s all happening in their immediate community.
In suburban areas, we don’t become just another media company among hundreds. We become the source of information for an entire community. That’s powerful positioning.
Building Something Bigger
The transition from insurance to newsletters wasn’t just a career change. It was about solving a real problem we experienced ourselves. We were living in this rapidly growing area and constantly felt out of the loop about what was happening around us.
Now, through Larkin Media and the upcoming InboxScoop venture, we’re solving that problem for thousands of people across multiple communities. We take the scattered, hard-to-find information that affects people’s daily lives and make it easily accessible.
It’s been incredible to watch how people respond when you give them exactly what they want in the format they want it. Our engagement rates blow most email newsletters out of the water, and we’re just getting started.
What’s Next
The insurance industry taught me about serving customers and building relationships. The AI world showed me the power of technology and automation. But local newsletters? This combines the best of both: genuine community service with scalable business potential.
We’re not just building newsletters. We’re building the infrastructure for hyperlocal media across the country. And we’re doing it by focusing on areas that the big players have overlooked, creating real value for people who just want to know what’s happening in their own backyard.
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