Why I Build Things: A Telecom Guy's Journey into AI and Code
I did not grow up wanting to be a software developer. I grew up in Germany with roots in Burkina Faso, playing soccer and figuring out how to navigate between cultures that could not be more different. My path to code was not through a CS degree or a coding bootcamp. It was through a decade and a half of enterprise telecom sales, a lot of frustration with manual processes, and a deep curiosity about how things work.
The Early Years
I moved to the United States at 13, earned a soccer scholarship to Reinhardt University in Georgia, and graduated with a degree in Business Administration in 2009. Sports taught me the two things that have defined my career ever since: discipline and the ability to perform under pressure.
My first real job was at AT&T, selling telecom solutions to government, education, and healthcare clients. I was good at it. By 2013 I had earned the Diamond Club Award, putting me in the top 1% of over 10,000 sales reps nationally. I spent 11 years at AT&T, moving from client solutions to technical sales, learning MPLS, VoIP, SD WAN, and network security inside and out.
The Shift
The shift to building software happened gradually. It started with Excel macros. I was managing complex proposals and tracking pipeline data in spreadsheets, and I got tired of doing the same formatting tasks over and over. So I learned VBA. Then I realized VBA could do more than format cells. It could import data, run calculations, generate reports, and send emails. Suddenly my spreadsheets were not just spreadsheets anymore. They were tools.
From VBA I jumped to JavaScript and Node.js. From there to React and Next.js. Then TypeScript, Python, and eventually AI integration. Each step was driven by a specific problem I wanted to solve, not by a desire to "learn to code." The code was always just the means.
Where Sales and Code Meet
Here is what most developers do not understand about enterprise sales, and what most sales people do not understand about code: they are the same discipline. Both are about understanding a complex system, identifying leverage points, and applying the right solution at the right time.
When I architect a network solution for a Fortune 500 company, I am doing the same thing I do when I architect a software system: gathering requirements, evaluating trade offs, designing something that solves the problem without over engineering it, and then executing flawlessly.
That intersection is where I live now. I joined Spectrum Enterprise in 2023 as a Technical Sales Consultant for Unified Communications, and by late 2025 I was promoted to Sales Manager at Spectrum Business Services. I lead a team across five product portfolios and coach them on consultative selling. But on nights and weekends, I build.
What I Build and Why
I have shipped 9+ production tools through my company withlukas. Email outreach engines, job search automation, crypto trading bots, performance tracking dashboards, medical practice websites, and more. Every single one started the same way: I saw a process that was slow, manual, or broken, and I thought, "I can fix that."
The AI revolution has supercharged this. Tools like Claude and GPT are not replacing builders. They are amplifying them. I can prototype in hours what used to take weeks. I can build classification systems that understand natural language. I can create personalized content at scale. The barrier between "I have an idea" and "I have a working product" has never been thinner.
The German American Edge
Growing up between cultures gave me something I did not appreciate until much later: the ability to translate between worlds. I do this literally (I am fluent in English and German) and figuratively (I translate between technical and business language every day). When I talk to a CTO, I speak tech. When I talk to a CFO, I speak ROI. When I build a tool for non technical reps, I think about their experience first and the code second.
What Comes Next
I am not done building. Not even close. Through withlukas, I help businesses automate their operations, build custom web applications, and integrate AI where it actually adds value. The telecom career gave me deep expertise in enterprise infrastructure and sales. The building gave me the ability to turn that expertise into tools that work while I sleep.
If there is a lesson in my story, it is this: you do not need permission to build. You do not need a CS degree. You do not need to quit your day job. You need a problem worth solving, the discipline to sit down and solve it, and the stubbornness to keep going when the code does not work at 11 PM on a Wednesday.
That stubbornness? I got it from soccer practice in the rain at Reinhardt. Everything else, I learned by doing.