The Story Behind
the Work.

Craig built a full-service digital marketing agency in downtown St. Petersburg. 3,000 square feet. A team he believed in. He paid his people well, invested in their growth, and kept his own draw low because he believed in building something before taking from it. That was not weakness. That was conviction.

But somewhere in all of it, he noticed something. Clients kept pulling him into conversations that had nothing to do with marketing. Cash flow strategy. Hiring decisions. Pricing. Business structure. He answered every question, offered every insight, and walked away having given away the most valuable thing he had. Then one afternoon, a client needed a spreadsheet fixed. Craig fixed it. The client said thanks. Craig joked about invoicing for $500. The client said, without blinking: “Can you invoice me?”

No hesitation. No negotiation. Craig had been doing business advisory for years. He just had not been charging for it.

He was home. Truck in the driveway. Lights on inside. Every external signal said present. But the office door was closed, and it stayed closed. His stepdaughter Lydia knocked and asked if they could go bump the volleyball. He said what he had said too many times before: “Just give me one more hour.”

One hour became three. Three became five. The sun went down. Dinner was missed. The volleyball never left the backyard.

That night, sitting on the edge of his bed, her face kept coming back to him. He had seen her smile when he said it. And in that smile he recognized something that landed like a confession. She had heard it before. A 14-year-old had already learned not to expect him. He was building the business FOR his family. And the business was keeping him FROM them.

“I was home. I was present. But I wasn’t present.”

That moment did not just change what Craig did. It changed why.

The volleyball moment sent Craig on a mission. He went deep into the research. He hired coaches, studied profit acceleration frameworks, and analyzed what the most profitable businesses in the world had in common. He worked with Karl Bryan and a growing network of coaches operating in 40+ countries. What he found every time was the same gap: people had knowledge. Nobody had a documented system.

So he built two. The Profit Acceleration Operating System™ first, a documented roadmap to profitable business growth across the 12 levers that run every business on earth. Then the Business Coach Operating System™, nine steps and 66 templates for coaches who needed a documented operating system of their own. Both built from the same first principles. Both built because the gap existed and someone had to fill it.

His third marriage ended. His business partner unilaterally dissolved the entity without warning. Two pillars gone at the same time. What followed was a year and a half of rebuilding quietly, working through what he had built, what he had broken, and who he was underneath all of it.

During that season, a text thread that had gone quiet came back to life. Craig and Jessica had known each other since Hartwick College in 1999. He had had a crush on her then. She transferred schools the next year and they lost touch entirely. Now, years later and both in their own healing seasons, the texts became calls and the calls became daily. She was the only person he told everything. She did not flinch. She did not leave.

Then a friend and mentor called and said: come to Tennessee. Craig laughed. Tennessee was not on his radar. He prayed that night. Woke up with a peace and a conviction he had not felt in years. Packed his truck, loaded up his dog Penny, and drove straight from Florida to Jonesborough and the Nolichucky River.

Three months. Him, God, and the river. He stopped forcing outcomes. “Surrender produced what force never could.”

Jessica made the trip. They hiked. The mountains. When she stepped out of the car, the connection that had been there since 1999 was not just still present. It was more obvious than ever. The familiarity of two people finding each other in the right season. They were married July 4, 2023. Just the two of them. Under God. At the river house.

Coming out of Tennessee, Craig spent a year inside Garrett J. White’s Wake Up Warrior™ program, eventually earning certification as a Warrior Trainer™. That season was about learning to turn pain, failure, and purpose into a mission worth building. Not a business model. A calling.

TruthWarrior™ is the personal expression of that mission. Craig’s movement to liberate men from the lies that keep them shackled to a life of mediocrity. It runs deeper than any business model. It is the deeper current underneath everything else.

Laughlin Business Advisors and Business Coach Launchpad™ are the professional expressions of that same conviction. LBA brings the Profit Acceleration Operating System™ directly to business owners who are done being the ceiling of their own company. BCL™ trains the coaches who carry that mission everywhere else. They are not businesses built for revenue. They are movements built from consequence, rebuilt from surrender, and run every day with Jessica beside him.

LBA is where they bring everything they paid to learn directly to you.