From blowtorches to boardrooms: why I partnered with Jacob Andra to build Talbot West

Note: Jacob was hesitant to let me publish this but he finally relented. I felt like the world should know more about his backstory. He prefers to focus on delivering results for clients. 

At three years old, Jacob Andra taught himself to read. At six, he operated a blowtorch. At fifteen, he oversaw one of only three EPA‑approved catalytic converter testing facilities in the United States while managing inventory, shipping, and other operations for a complex multi‑million‑dollar business.

My assessment of Jacob

I have spent my career around boardrooms filled with pedigreed executives who are brilliant in their niches yet often narrow in perspective. Jacob is different. What compels me to work with him is the rare combination of who he is and what he can do.

Who he is at his core: integrity under pressure, resilience, stamina, and a non‑performative work ethic. He works systematically, always mapping how every piece connects to the whole before he moves.

What he can uniquely do: keep many interdependent variables in view at once across sales & marketing, procurement, manufacturing, testing, inventory, shipping, regulatory compliance, and customer relationships. He synthesizes cross‑functional signals into execution, anticipates where markets and technologies are heading, and adopts and operationalizes emerging tools long before others see their potential. This is an operator who unlocks order‑of‑magnitude gains when the constraint is system design.

Forged in an extreme environment

To understand how someone develops these qualities, you have to go back to a rural community where he worked as a child in a catalytic converter factory miles from the nearest town. No school, just lots of hard work.

By law, every vehicle in America required a catalytic converter. OEM replacements were expensive. Aftermarket universals were unreliable and often failed emissions tests. Jacob’s father built a business remanufacturing converters to OEM‑equivalent quality at near‑aftermarket pricing.

From the age of six, Jacob spent long days on the line cutting, welding, sandblasting, painting, and assembling converters. He harvested parts in sprawling salvage yards in harsh conditions and joined his father on extended trips that blended procurement, sales, and customer service in major metropolitan centers across the country. It was a crucible where he learned how a complex business model worked end to end and how trust is built across every demographic.

As a teen, Jacob moved up to management and systems design. He spearheaded the industry’s first comprehensive converter catalog, involving thousands of hours of field research, data architecture, and taxonomy design that competitors later adopted as the standard. When the EPA imposed emissions testing, 15‑year‑old Jacob ran the company’s new federally regulated testing facility. He optimized workflows, managed compliance, and increased throughput by 230%.

By eighteen, he was managing production, scaling distribution, and sustaining 24% year‑over‑year growth for five consecutive years. He brought the company online with early internet ordering systems.

Moving on

When Jacob left the family business, he built multiple companies, from a house painting business to a marketing agency. At each step, he introduced new technologies to drive transformation. Long before most agencies considered automation, Jacob was weaving AI tools into daily operations and progressively increasing margins and quality.

This instinct has defined his technology career: spot emerging capabilities, implement them deeply, and turn them into competitive advantage. Which brings us to Talbot West. Jacob’s applied AI work is not a leap from an unusual past. It is the culmination of decades spent integrating technology into business systems under real‑world pressure and adapting to an ever-shifting landscape while staying relentlessly focused on delivering results.

What I have seen with my own eyes

I was not there when Jacob was running blowtorches in the desert or supervising a testing facility at fifteen. I have, however, seen him in the present, working in applied AI. I have watched him test, break, and re‑engineer today’s AI platforms while others are still reading the headlines. I have seen him architect and iterate frameworks such as Talbot West’s APEX prioritization model and CHAI composable architecture in live business environments. I have seen him make predictions about where the state of the industry is going, and then see those predictions validated by leading academics and researchers later. I have seen his ability to hone in on what drives results for clients and see complex systems clearly. And I have seen his relentless dedication to delivering outsize value to clients.

Compared with many corporate leaders I have known, Jacob brings a rare combination high-level vision combined with tactical genius; of character depth and systems capability. As a teenager, he touched every piece of a multi‑million‑dollar industrial business. That trial by fire created cross‑disciplinary fluency. He did not just learn one part of the machine. He learned how the entire machine fits together and how to make it run under pressure. And he learned grit, drive, and resilience that can’t be taught.

Talbot West’s advantage

Jacob’s story matters because it forged the qualities and capabilities leaders need most right now: resilience, integrity, systems‑level acumen, stamina, and mastery of applied AI.

You can trust pedigree, or you can trust proven ability. I have spent long enough in boardrooms to know the difference. With Talbot West, you are not just hiring consultants. You are partnering with operators who have built, scaled, and transformed systems under pressure. Our standard is simple: if we aren't confident we'll deliver massive organizational ROI over our fee, we will not take the engagement.