Baltimore, MD — Customer & Operations Leadership
I build the systems that make teams perform at a higher level.
I lead customer-facing teams, design the coaching frameworks behind them, and apply AI to make both run without me in the room. Eleven years building a company on the side taught me what most leadership training doesn't: systems beat heroics, every time. Currently exploring executive leadership, consulting, and advisory opportunities.
About
The throughline, not the timeline.
Most people meet me through one job title at a time — sales rep, team leader, founder. None of those, on their own, explain how I think.
It started at Comcast, carrying a number every month, learning fast that the reps who hit targets weren't the most talented in the room — they were the ones who'd turned their best moves into something repeatable. I beat my sales targets by 30%, not because I worked harder than everyone else, but because I started training the people around me to do what was working.
At the same time, I was building something of my own. What started as an entrepreneurial chapter in the travel industry — recruiting, coaching, growing a network from nothing — taught me the parts of leadership a corporate org chart never will: how to motivate people who don't report to you, how to sell a vision before there's any proof it works, and how to keep showing up when most of what you try doesn't.
That entrepreneurial instinct became The JetLyfe in 2015 — a lifestyle brand I've built from a blank page into a real business, alongside a full-time career, for over a decade. Brand strategy, product, manufacturing, marketing, community — I learned all of it by doing it, usually at night.
I went back for an MBA to put a formal structure under instincts I'd already been testing in the field. Then I took everything — the sales discipline, the founder's resourcefulness, the strategic frame — into IKEA, where I've spent the past several years building the coaching systems and training frameworks that let a team perform consistently, not just occasionally. Today I lead a team of twelve to a sustained 90%+ customer satisfaction, and increasingly, I'm doing it with AI doing the heavy lifting on the systems side.
Every chapter taught me the same lesson from a different angle: talent is optional, systems aren't. That's the thread connecting all of it.
Core Philosophy
"Help people and organizations perform at a higher level — not through more effort, but through better systems."
Leadership Philosophy
Three beliefs I don't compromise on.
These aren't values-statement filler. They're the operating rules behind every team I've run and every system I've built.
Customer Obsession
Great customer experiences aren't a personality trait — they're built through consistency, ownership, and outcomes you can measure on a Tuesday, not just describe in a values deck.
People First
Managing performance and developing people are not the same activity. Strong organizations are built by leaders who choose the second one, even when the first one is faster.
Continuous Improvement
Curiosity, measurement, and the willingness to use new tools — including AI — are what separate teams that improve from teams that just repeat themselves.
Experience
A leadership journey, not a job history.
Five chapters, one continuous thread: turn individual effort into a system other people can run.
CoachChatt — Business Development Consulting
Supporting sales outreach, prospect research, and business development for targeted opportunities. Managing lead pipelines and CRM activity in GoHighLevel while building toward the next executive leadership chapter.
Comcast — Customer Account Executive
Carried a sales and retention number for an account base, and beat it by 30% through cross-selling and disciplined account management. Took on training new hires alongside the role — an early sign of the coaching identity that would define the next decade.
Early Entrepreneurial Chapter
Built a business development and leadership track record in the travel industry — recruiting, coaching, and growing teams from the ground up, with no corporate scaffolding to lean on. The skills that don't show up on an org chart: persuasion without authority, resilience without guarantees, and community-building as a growth strategy. This is where the founder's instincts that built The JetLyfe were first tested.
The JetLyfe — Founder & CEO
Founded and built a lifestyle and apparel brand from nothing, in parallel with a full-time corporate career. Brand strategy, product development, international manufacturing, vendor negotiation, e-commerce, and community — all owned end to end. Full case study below ↓
MBA — Southern New Hampshire University
Returned to formalize a decade of field instinct into strategic frameworks, concentrating in social media marketing — the discipline most directly feeding both the IKEA enablement work and The JetLyfe's growth.
IKEA — Business Service & Sales Specialist
Managed business-customer relationships and large-volume orders with a white-glove standard, guiding customers through digital tools and lifting adoption — the customer-experience foundation the current role scales from.
IKEA — Remote Team Leader
Led a team of 12 through structured coaching, accountability, and role-play-based training, sustaining 90%+ CSAT across U.S. markets. Built the enablement tools — and AI-assisted systems — that made that consistency repeatable rather than personality-dependent.
Executive Case Study
Building The JetLyfe
Eleven years of running a real company, on real margins, with no department to hand the hard parts to. This is the chapter that pressure-tested every leadership skill on this page.
In 2015, alongside a full-time corporate career, I started The JetLyfe with no team, no funding, and no industry relationships — just a brand idea and the conviction that I could learn whatever the business required. A decade later, it's a functioning company with its own manufacturing relationships, e-commerce operation, and community. The value of building it was never the apparel. It was everything building it forced me to become.
Strategy & Brand
Defined the brand's positioning, voice, and visual identity from a blank page, and have evolved that positioning deliberately as the business matured rather than letting it drift.
Product & Manufacturing
Took products from concept to production, including sourcing and negotiating directly with international manufacturers — quality control, lead times, and margins, with no procurement department as a buffer.
Customer Journey & Digital
Designed and continually optimized the e-commerce experience and digital marketing engine — the same customer-journey thinking I apply to enterprise CX, just with no corporate playbook to fall back on.
Community & Growth
Built an engaged community from zero using organic content and direct relationship-building, the same skill set developed during the early entrepreneurial chapter in travel.
Capital & Resourcing
Pursued grant writing and alternative funding paths to fuel growth without outside equity — learning the discipline of making a strong case for resources with no guaranteed return.
AI-Enabled Operations
Rebuilt internal workflows — content, customer support, documentation — around AI tools well before doing the same became standard practice, turning a one-person operations bottleneck into a repeatable system.
Why it matters to an employer
Running JetLyfe didn't compete with the corporate career. It compounded it.
Every system built for The JetLyfe — coaching content into reusable training, customer journeys into repeatable flows, manual work into AI-assisted process — found its way back into the IKEA enablement work, and vice versa. An executive who has had to be the entire org chart, at least once, leads differently than one who hasn't.
AI & Innovation
I don't use AI. I build with it.
The difference matters. Using a chatbot to draft an email is a convenience. Designing AI into the actual mechanics of how a team trains, coaches, and operates is a business decision — and it's the one I've been making for years, long before it had a name.
Training & Coaching Systems
Built AI-assisted role-play scenarios, coaching templates, and reinforcement scripts that turn one good coaching conversation into a system the whole team can repeat.
Workflow Automation
Used AI to compress the operational drag of two demanding roles — enablement work at IKEA and running The JetLyfe — into something one person could actually sustain.
Strategic & Business Documentation
Applied AI to business planning, grant writing, and internal documentation — turning strategic thinking into clear, fundable, actionable written work faster.
Marketing & Knowledge Management
Built content and marketing systems for The JetLyfe powered by AI tooling, and use the same instinct to organize and surface institutional knowledge for a team.
Certifications
Completed all 8 courses demonstrating applied AI across brainstorming, research, communication, content creation, data analysis, and coding — including building a portfolio of 20+ AI artifacts and vibe-coding a custom AI solution.
Passed a proctored, timed assessment covering core AI concepts, machine learning fundamentals, generative AI, and ethical considerations — a verified skills exam, not a course completion.
View all 8 Google course badges ↓
AI Fundamentals
AI for Brainstorming and Planning
AI for Research and Insights
AI for Writing and Communicating
AI for Content Creation
AI for Data Analysis
AI for App Building
AI for App DeploymentInsights
Writing on leadership, AI, and building things.
Long-form thinking on the topics that show up everywhere in the work above. New pieces added regularly.
Why "managing performance" and "developing people" aren't the same job
The distinction every coaching conversation should start from.
Read → Artificial IntelligenceAI is a systems decision, not a tools decision
What changes when you design AI into a workflow instead of bolting it on.
Read → EntrepreneurshipWhat running a business on nights and weekends actually teaches you
Eleven years of building The JetLyfe, condensed into the parts that transferred.
Read → Customer Success90% CSAT is a systems number, not a personality number
How consistent customer experience gets built, not hoped for.
Read →Resume
The short version, on paper.
Experience
Education & Certifications
Technology
What People Say
From the people I've worked with.
Real testimonials, currently being collected — placeholders below show the kind of feedback this section will carry once quotes are confirmed.
"Antonio doesn't just hit his numbers — he builds the playbook everyone else on the team ends up using."
— Remote Area Manager, IKEA"The coaching frameworks he built changed how our whole team approaches difficult customer conversations."
— Key Account Manager, IKEA"Watching him run a company on the side while leading a team full-time taught me more about discipline than any course could."
— Co-worker, IKEAContact
Let's start a conversation.
Open to executive opportunities, speaking engagements, consulting, and partnerships. If there's a fit, I'd like to hear about it.
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