Why I built this.

I didn't come to Middle Tennessee to start a company. I came because I had nowhere else to go, and a family who said yes without hesitation.

I grew up the eldest of five in the western suburbs of Chicago, finished school early, earned an MBA by twenty-two, and went into business consulting and technology development. In 2012 I married Kate. From the outside, the years that followed looked fine. They weren't. We walked through hard seasons I didn't handle well, and a serious accident in 2018 I shouldn't have survived: months of learning again how to walk, how to talk, how to find my voice. God kept me alive. I went right back to living like He hadn't.

In late 2021, Kate died.

I moved to Tennessee to be near family and started attending First Baptist Church in Hohenwald. That first year I was surrounded by people who loved me and I was still lost. Grief doesn't keep a schedule. It arrived in the middle of a service, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, and I had no idea what to do with it.

I should be honest about what that year actually looked like, because the people at First Baptist will remember it. I wasn't at the events. I wasn't in anyone's small group. I came on Sunday, sat there, and left. A couple of men reached out when I was in a bad place and said things I needed to hear, and the pastor was steady with me, but I wasn't giving anybody much to work with.

What got through was the singing and the preaching. Week after week the sermon landed like it had been written for me that morning. I don't think that was the preacher's doing. God met me the way I actually am, not the way I'd be if I were better with people.

At some point I stopped fighting. I let go of the bitterness, the blame, and the idea that I could reason my way through any of this on my own. I accepted that God's plan is far larger than anything I can see from where I stand. I stopped trying to be my own answer and took Christ at His word. On June 19, 2022, I was baptized at First Baptist Hohenwald.

The grief didn't disappear. It never will, and that was never the promise. What God gave me instead was a foundation underneath it. Seen from His eternal perspective, even the darkest seasons are short chapters in a much longer story. That changed how I carry the weight. It changed how I face a Monday. I'm not a man who got his old life back. I'm a man who was given a new one.

Ekkluo didn't start as a product. It started as a thank-you.

My sister needed a simple way to track her children's readers club at church. I built a small tool to help. Then another member asked about spiritual gifts assessments. Then someone needed help coordinating an event. One small act of service at a time, for the church family that had carried me, until it grew into a full platform. Today it serves First Baptist Hohenwald, where I worship every Sunday. Not as an outside vendor. As a member, and these days I stay after and talk to people, which the man in that first year would not have done.

I've spent my career watching good people burn out because the systems around them weren't built to support the work. The church is no different. The people who show up every week to serve in the nursery, coordinate volunteers, visit the sick, and help families in need deserve tools that work with them, not against them. When the platform is right, people stay focused on their gifts instead of managing around the gaps.

That's where the name comes from. Ekkluo is the giving up Paul warns against: the bowstring going slack, the arm that gives out before the work is done. “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” That last phrase is the word. This software exists to keep the bow strung tight, so the people doing God's work never have to stop.

That's why the price is flat. One simple monthly fee with everything included. No per-member charges, no modules to unlock later. A church watching its budget shouldn't have to do math before caring for its people.

That's why support is local. I'm right here in Middle Tennessee. You're talking to the person who built it.

God took the hardest year of my life and a career I once thought was only about me, and put both to work for His church. I'm still amazed at that. This is where my gifts went, and I'm grateful every day that they had somewhere to go.