The Companies I Build & Run

Ventures. Operator-built.

One agency, three software companies. Each one started as a problem we kept hitting inside Xpand Digital — and got rebuilt as a product when the workaround wouldn't scale. Everything I write about in The Growth Architecture and AI for Revenue is deployed here, on real revenue, every day.

4
Ventures shipping
12 yrs
Operator track record
$96M+
Client revenue generated
300+
Campaigns / year
Generative Engine OptimizationNEW
MentionLayer

Get your brand recommended by AI.

Traditional SEO ranks pages. MentionLayer earns the citations, reviews, and entity signals that make ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude name your brand when buyers ask for a recommendation.

Built for

Brands, agencies, and resellers competing for AI-generated recommendations.

  • Citation Engine — branded answers in high-authority forum threads AI models cite
  • GEO Tracker — real-time visibility scoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude
  • Entity Sync — consistent identity across directories and knowledge graphs
  • Review Engine — amplify UGC on the platforms LLMs trust
Read moreVisit mentionlayer.com
AI-Powered Digital PRLIVE
PressForge

15 hours of PR work, in 15 minutes.

Built inside Xpand Digital after 300+ campaigns a year exposed where digital PR breaks. Campaign ideation, voice-modeled press releases, a compounding journalist database, and outreach that respects cross-client cooldowns.

Built for

Digital PR agencies running multi-client campaign volume.

  • 200+ calendar hooks feeding a campaign ideation engine
  • Voice-modeled press releases that capture spokesperson personality
  • Database-first journalist discovery, web-search second
  • Cross-client cooldown system — no duplicate pitches, ever
Read moreVisit getpressforge.com
Catalog Finance OutreachLIVE
Praecora

Outreach that doesn't feel like outreach.

Personalized Instagram DMs and email at scale for music catalog finance scouts — drafted from artist bios, recent posts, and Spotify signals. The scout closes deals; Praecora handles the volume.

Built for

Music catalog financing scouts and solo operators.

  • ~140 IG DMs + ~500 emails per day at top tier
  • AI-drafted cold openers grounded in real artist context
  • Unified inbox with AI classification and suggested replies
  • Deal pipeline + commission dashboard
Read moreVisit praecora.com
Performance Growth AgencyESTABLISHED
Xpand Digital

Where the architecture gets deployed.

Twelve years. $96M+ in client revenue. Ranked #1 for SEO in every major Australian city. Every framework in the books was pressure-tested here first — and every venture above was born from a problem Xpand kept hitting.

Built for

Businesses doing $500K–$10M+ ready to compound.

  • AI-Enhanced SEO across 40+ industries
  • Database Reactivation — pay-per-result on dead CRM leads
  • Google Ads with 32% average ROAS lift
  • Cold email + LinkedIn lead-gen at 2–3K emails/day infrastructure
Read moreVisit xpanddigital.io
Why I Build

Books explain it. Software proves it.

I don't write theory and I don't ship vapourware. Every venture above started as a workaround inside Xpand Digital that we ran often enough to productize. The books describe the system; the companies are the system, running.

Read the booksAbout Joel