About YLCJ

What Is YLCJ?

YourLastCorporateJob.com started with a simple observation: the people who are most valuable inside companies are often the same people who could build something of their own. AI is making that path more accessible than ever. But "accessible" does not mean "easy." The content here is built on direct experience — not theory, not secondhand advice, but the daily practice of building AI automation inside a real company and seeing firsthand which human skills become more important as machines handle more of the routine.

The Five Pillars

YLCJ is built around five capabilities that become more valuable — not less — as AI changes the economy: Creation, Building, Judgment, Empathy, and Stewardship. These are not abstract concepts. They are the skills that show up every day in the work, and they are the ones that no amount of prompting will replicate.

Who This Is For

You are good at what you do. You have built real capability inside an organization. But you feel the ground shifting, and you are not the type to wait and see. Whether you are thinking about building something of your own, repositioning for the AI economy, or simply want to be intentional about the next chapter — this is where that thinking starts.

How I Got Here

I grew up in a trucking family. One grandfather worked for the railroad. The other was a former trucker who built a large flatbed carrier in the Memphis area. My father and his siblings worked there. I grew up around freight, diesel, and people who solved problems with their hands and their word.

I went to Ole Miss, studied finance, earned my MBA, and was sure I wanted nothing to do with trucking. I worked operations at FedEx. I took an analyst role at International Paper that grew into a controller training track — working across plants in Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee while my wife Laurie and our son were back home in south Louisiana. When she was pregnant with our daughter Emmie and I was living in a hotel in Morristown, Tennessee, I knew something had to change.

In 2014, I was offered the COO role at Empire Express. I moved home — same city I grew up in, same school district for the kids, two blocks from the golf course and rec center I'd known my whole life. I have been here since. Today I serve as President and COO.

At a small company, you do everything. I interned as a dispatcher in college, running loads on an AS/400 — and years later came back. Over the years I have been the quality management guy, the recruiting guy, the HR guy, the IT guy, the training guy, the presentation guy. I built the Ed Gatlin Leadership Academy — an eighteen-month program modeled after an MBA curriculum — to develop our next generation of leaders. When key people left and a critical systems failure took our infrastructure offline, I became the SQL guy, the IT administrator, the network guy. Every void became something I had to learn, and lately, AI has been the tool that makes that learning possible at a pace I never imagined.

That is where this site comes from. Not from a lab. Not from a keynote stage. From the daily work of running a real company, filling real gaps, and watching firsthand which human skills AI replaces and which ones it makes irreplaceable.

BORN OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT · JOHN 3:5