Seven days ago, NextGen was an idea. A conviction that parents need help navigating the AI age, but not the kind of help that exists — not fear-mongering headlines or sanitized corporate advice. Real guidance from someone actually raising kids through this transition.
Today it's a product. Live website. Paid ads running. Email sequences written. Content calendar mapped. Marketing dashboard tracking every click. Legal entity formed. Bank account pending.
That's what a week looks like when you stop planning and start building.
• • •
What We Built
In seven days:
- AS Above Technologies LLC — Formed and filed with Alaska. The legal home for everything that isn't cannabis.
- NextGen website — Complete redesign. Lead capture. Membership page. Content architecture.
- Meta Ads campaign — Live, targeting parents 28-50. Programmatic API access configured. Real-time dashboard.
- The Parent's AI Playbook — Free lead magnet. Age-appropriate AI guidance. Family policy template.
- 5-email nurture sequence — Welcome to conversion in 10 days.
- Content calendar — Four pillars. Weekly cadence. Three months of ideas.
None of this existed last Monday.
• • •
Why NextGen Exists
I have three sons. Eighteen, nine, and seven. I watch them interact with technology every single day. And I see the gap between what schools teach and what the world demands growing wider by the month.
Most parents feel this. They know something is different. They sense that the playbook they followed — degree, job, retirement — isn't going to work for their kids. But they don't know what to do about it.
NextGen is the answer I'm building for my own family, shared with anyone who wants it.
Four pillars:
- AI Fluency — Not just using AI. Understanding it. Building with it. Knowing its limits.
- Financial Literacy — Money as a language, not a taboo. Wealth as a family value.
- Future-Proof Skills — Creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking. The things machines can't replicate.
- Parent Mindset — You can't give what you don't have. Your growth is their inheritance.
• • •
The Portfolio Philosophy
NextGen doesn't exist in isolation. It's one piece of a larger architecture I've been building for years. Let me explain why each piece matters.
Red Run Cannabis — Cash flow engine. Four retail locations, manufacturing, cultivation. This is the active income that funds everything else. Alaska's cannabis market is challenging, but we've built something that works. It pays the bills while I build the future.
Real Estate — Equity and passive income. Rental properties, short-term rentals. Real assets that appreciate while generating monthly cash. The foundation of any serious wealth strategy.
As Above Technologies — The AI play. NextGen lives here. MicroTrust lives here. Voice agents, content products, everything at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human value. This is where the asymmetric upside lives.
The Content Empire — Reputation and reach. This journal. The newsletter. Social presence. Content compounds. Every article, every insight, every piece of value I put into the world builds an audience that trusts me. That trust converts to everything else.
The Law Firm — My wife Shana's domain, but I support the operations. Professional services with recurring revenue. Another leg of the stool.
• • •
The Underlying Philosophy
Here's what ties it all together:
Multiple streams, multiple time horizons. Red Run pays today. Real estate builds equity over years. As Above bets on the next decade. Content compounds forever. No single point of failure.
Active income funds passive assets. Every dollar of profit from the businesses gets deployed into things that work while I sleep. Real estate. Markets. Bets on the future.
Build in public, compound in private. I share the journey, the lessons, the frameworks. I keep the positions and the numbers to myself. Reputation is public. Wealth is private.
Family is the point. None of this matters if I'm not present for my kids. If I'm not building something they can inherit — not just money, but values, skills, relationships. The Theiler Trust isn't just a legal entity. It's a philosophy of generational thinking.
• • •
Week Two
The EIN arrives this week. Then the bank account. Then Stripe. Then we can actually accept money.
The ads are running. The funnel is built. Now we see if the market wants what we're selling.
I think they do. Because every parent I talk to feels the same anxiety. They know the world is changing. They don't know how to prepare their kids. And nobody is giving them real answers.
NextGen is the real answer.
Let's see what week two brings.