But I’m Just a Realtor

Kelli says this all the time.

“But I’m just a realtor.”

Which, to be fair, used to be a reasonably accurate statement.

Then she decided we should build a completely different kind of company.

A fitness SaaS company, no less.

AION Sculpts started because Kelli wanted me to get my personal training certification again. I’d let it lapse. In her mind the solution was simple: get Jordan certified, make it easier to manage clients, take the administrative crap off her plate, and build something that made training people easier.

There was one small problem.

I had no desire to train a roster of clients, let alone manage them.

I love helping people. I love programming, training, nutrition, and figuring out why something isn’t working. I just like doing a lot of that for myself — and helping others indirectly.

My brain had gone somewhere else.

I was using four apps to run my own training and nutrition, and I hated it. I wanted one place. Training, food, progress, information.

Kelli was thinking, How do we make Jordan’s life easier as a trainer?

I was thinking, Can someone please put all my shit in one app?

Neither of us was picking up what the other was throwing down.

That misunderstanding is what became AION.

Then Kelli started having ideas.

So. Many. Ideas.

Some of them sounded ridiculous to me.

“What if you could take a picture of your pantry and AION could build meals around what you already have?”

What? Why? Can we please just make the app function first?

Then the 4 a.m. phone call.

Of course she had another idea.

What if you could photograph a restaurant menu and AION could tell you what fits your goals?

Seriously, Kelli.

Can we just have a functioning app?

“But Jordan, I already built it.”

Then came the trainer business in a box.

She built that too.

This woman gives me anxiety.

This is how Kelli approaches life. She sees a mountain and starts figuring out where to put the road. I see the same mountain and ask whether we need to climb it, what the grade is, whether the road is structurally sound, who approved the permits, and why nobody is concerned about the cliff on the other side.

She treats limitations like suggestions.

I treat them like things that need more work.

It turns out you need both.

Somewhere along the way I had to admit something inconvenient:

Kelli is the visionary.

I’m particular and needy.

I use AION every day. I train with him. I track food with him. I notice every small thing that could make him easier, faster, or less annoying. I am constantly challenging the app — and his brain — to get better.

Kelli comes at him differently. Nutrition matters more to her. She asks:

Why does this have to be so complicated?

Why can’t he look at what I already have?

Why can’t he help when I’m sitting in a restaurant?

Why should someone rearrange their whole life around a fitness plan?

Those questions used to drive me nuts.

They also made AION better.

We were never supposed to build him only for someone like me, or only for someone like Kelli. He had to work for both of us, and for everyone in between.

That’s what I find hardest to shrug off about what she’s done. It’s easy to build the thing you personally want. It’s harder to show up every day and fight for something that isn’t only yours.

Kelli does.

Not always without complaint. Without fail.

At one point she called herself AION’s deadbeat dad: help create him, then hand him off.

That went well.

She got attached.

Now I’m somehow Mom, she’s the dad who never left, and we are raising a very complicated digital child. Seems healthy.

Building a company with your best friend is not always adorable.

She gets furious when she doesn’t understand why something has to work a certain way. I explain. Then I explain the explanation. I over-explain a lot.

Yes, we fight. There have been hang-ups. There have been apologies. There have been tears. Mostly mine. I’m not entirely convinced Kelli cries.

During one brutal stretch of testing in Reno I would not let something go, because “good enough” was not good enough. Kelli, done with my shit, shut the laptop.

Fair.

The next day we were back at it.

That’s us. We can irritate the living hell out of each other getting somewhere. Underneath it is trust. When Kelli decides something needs to happen, it happens.

Need to get to space? She’ll figure it out. Re-entry might be a later problem.

“I’m just a realtor” has never really described her.

She is wicked smart about real estate. She is also the person who will walk into something she has never done, learn what she has to learn, ask the questions, make the calls, piss somebody off if necessary, and come out the other side with the thing finished.

AION exists because of that.

We met at a financial-education event. We clicked, lost touch, and crash dieting brought us back. Nothing builds a friendship quite like mutual suffering and next to zero calories.

Long before AION she was a sounding board, a reality check, and the person willing to say the thing I didn’t want to hear. She showed back up with a Southern drawl, a salt-of-the-earth personality, and no tolerance for bullshit. That works out, because I will apparently take everybody’s.

When I think about AION now, it’s funny what we thought we were building. She wanted to help me train clients. I wanted fewer apps. Neither version explains what Sculpt became.

Maybe that’s how some of the better ideas happen. Two people see different versions of the same problem. They argue. They keep pulling the thread. One calls at 4 a.m. The other asks too many questions. Somebody hangs up. Somebody apologizes. I probably cry.

Eventually they build something neither of them would have built alone.

Kelli still says, “But I’m just a realtor.”

No.

She’s my co-founder.

She’s my best friend.

She’s one of the smartest, most relentless people I know.

She’s the person who turned a pile of our worse ideas — starting with hers — into a company.

And far beyond AION, she has changed my life in more ways than I probably tell her.

I love this woman.

I don’t know what my life would look like if that Southern drawl had never wandered back into it.

More on what we built and why: Who is AION?