Who Is Jacob Canfield?

01 The Premise

Success through failure

In 2008, right after my first child was born, I watched every dollar I’d invested since age 16 go to near zero. New baby, wiped-out savings, a market in free fall. That was the first time I learned the lesson this whole site is built on — and it wasn’t the last. Since then I’ve walked away from a medical career I spent eight years earning, and I built a 750,000-follower audience on a platform I did not control, which taught me the lesson everything now runs on: own your own distribution. I kept building anyway.

This site runs on one premise: success through failure and determination. Not failure as a slogan — failure as tuition. Every framework I share was paid for in full before I ever wrote it down.

02 1984 — 2010

Forged: soldier, then doctor

Enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant by 19, running communications and intelligence in Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–2005). Two Army Commendation Medals.

Then the doctor chapter: B.S. in Biomedical Sciences & Biology with a math minor (3.9 GPA) at Western Michigan, Doctor of Chiropractic at 24. The Army taught me systems and calm under fire; medicine taught me that discipline compounds. Both taught me I’d never survive a default path.

03 2011 — Now

Marketing expert

Building marketing engines since 2011, when I started my first agency in the basement of my own clinic. Today I run BNGR, a performance creative agency for DTC e-commerce brands: 1,000+ ad creatives a month, $10M+ in tracked spend, 20+ brands.

The criteria I hold myself to: verifiable spend, shipped volume, owned audiences. I grew 750,000 followers organically and lost them to a platform’s decision in a single morning — which is why everything I build now funnels to assets nobody can delete.

04 2000 — Now

Technology & finance expert

Investing since 16, with money my grandmother gave me. The 2008 crash took it all to near zero — months after my first child was born. Instead of leaving the markets, I went to war with my own ignorance: years of studying price, risk, and human behavior until trading became a discipline instead of a hope. In crypto I became the #1-ranked Bitcoin analyst on TradingView, co-founded a trading education community, and hosted a podcast where I interviewed a then-unknown Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019. In tech, I co-founded Grand Apps — 800+ digital products shipped, still running today.

The criteria: skin in the game, systems over signals, lessons priced in. I’ve made calls that aged brilliantly and calls that aged terribly, in public, under my own name. That’s the cost of the arena — and the only place real judgment gets built.

05 2006 — 2017

Wellness expert

Doctor of Chiropractic. Built Simple Truth Chiropractic from an empty room into a thriving Grand Rapids practice and exited in 2017. Founded ClinicVitamins, a clinical-grade supplement company, because I’d seen what the discount-bin versions actually contained.

The criteria: clinical training, built & exited, practiced daily. Health is the asset every other asset depends on — I learned that treating patients, and relearned it rebuilding my own health after the hardest years of my life.

06 4 deals & 1 acquisition

Investor & acquirer

I invest the way I operate: hands on, close to the numbers, and only where I can actually help. To date I have done four angel deals. Every one passed the same filter I apply to my own companies. Verifiable numbers. Founders with skin in the game. A problem I have watched someone struggle with up close.

The clearest proof of the approach was not a check I wrote. It was a company I bought. Air Titans was an HVAC company doing about $500,000 a year when I acquired it. Two years later it was doing $4.5 million, backed by more than 2,800 customer reviews, and I sold it. Ten x in revenue in twenty four months, in one of the most boring industries in America. The playbook was nothing exotic. It was the same systems I write about on this site. Reviews as the growth engine. Offers built around the phone call the customer was already making. Marketing that leads with benefits instead of features. Processes written down so the business ran without the owner, which is the only reason it was sellable.

Today that same model runs through performance deals in the DTC space, including equity in OneSol, where the agency work and the ownership sit on the same side of the table. That is what I mean by operator capital. I have written elsewhere about why my money goes into my own ideas first. When I do invest in someone else, the deal has to survive three questions. Can I verify the numbers. Can I add real operating leverage. Does the founder lose sleep if this fails. Four deals have passed. Most do not.

07 Now

BNGR & the daily work

Today it all runs through one filter: performance you can verify. BNGR is the company the younger version of me needed — no hype, no borrowed credibility, just shipped work and audited numbers.

I write here every day — Crypto, Marketing, Business, Scams & Security, and Life — and say hello on X.