How I got here
A kid who broke everything in the house, a national team run that ended on a hamstring, a career U-turn mid-scholarship, and the demo from my brother that started all of this.
I broke things first
I grew up knowing I wanted to be an engineer. The official evidence was Legos and Bionicles. The real training was less official: I broke things around the house constantly, and the only way to stay out of trouble was to fix them before anyone noticed. That forced me to figure out how a thing worked, why it worked, and which part I had just ruined. I didn't know it at the time, but that's most of the job description I have now.
Fighting
The other half of my childhood was taekwondo. I grew up training, and it eventually became a real athletic career. I made the US national team at featherweight, fighting at -68kg. At the 2015 US Open I placed top 4, and I'd love to give you a dramatic account of the semifinal, but the honest version is that I pulled my hamstring and had to bow out.
That run earned me a full ride scholarship to De La Salle University in Manila. I took it.
The wrong major, on purpose
Here's an admission: I chose marketing as my major because I knew I couldn't hold engineering grades and an athletic career at the same time. It was a deliberate trade. Train, compete, keep the scholarship, and pick a course load that leaves room to breathe. For three years that worked.
But the gut feeling that I was supposed to be an engineer never went away, and by year three it was eating me up. So I made the U-turn. I stopped competing, walked away from the sport that had paid for my education, and switched into industrial engineering. It's still the biggest bet I've made, and it's the decision I'd defend the hardest.
Process improvement
Industrial engineering is where everything clicked. Process improvement felt like the grown-up version of fixing what I broke as a kid: map how the thing actually works, find where it leaks, redesign it, prove the redesign with numbers.
My internship made it concrete. I worked with a restaurant group running more than 40 locations, rebuilding the logistics and inventory templates their teams lived in every day. Cleaner data in, less manual computation, faster decisions out. Watching those fixes ripple across an 8 figure operation taught me the lesson I've been living on since: one person who truly understands a process can move a business far bigger than themselves. They offered me a full-time role.
The fork
Before I accepted that offer, my brother Kris showed me the world of AI automation. I haven't looked back since.
I learned by following other people's builds until I could run my own. LoL players will recognize the method: your first build order comes straight from someone better than you, and the understanding of why it works shows up somewhere around the hundredth game. Automation went the same way for me. Copy the build, break it, rebuild it, and eventually you're the one writing them. That path led to building automations for 7 figure marketing and advertising agencies, and it's the same reason I publish my own builds as free templates now.
Now
Today I run WinflowAI, where I build AI automation for lead generation and CRM operations: cold outbound systems, sales pipelines, and the backend plumbing that keeps them reliable. I'm an official n8n creator, and the core of my cold outbound architecture is published there as free templates. I also co-founded Vantage Insights with Kris, focused on backend operations and internal dashboards for mid-market teams.
And in January I stepped in as interim CEO of our family business, which has been running for more than twenty years and was losing about $6,000 a month. Seven weeks later it was profitable. I wrote up what actually fixed it in a note on customer touch points.
I'm about a year into building these systems professionally, and I like being early. I remember exactly what not knowing felt like, which makes me a better teacher than someone who's forgotten the bottom of the learning curve.
Miscellaneous facts
- I boulder. Reading a route before touching the wall and mapping a process before automating it are the same skill wearing different shoes.
- I actually play LoL. The analogies in my notes come from real hours, some of them regrettable.
- Competition weight was -68kg. I do miss cutting exactly zero percent of the time.
- The Legos came first, but the Bionicles were the real obsession.
FAQ
Is Keith really an official n8n creator?
Yes. My creator profile is at n8n.io/creators/keithuy with seven published templates, all free. The core of my cold outbound architecture lives there.
Did Keith really fight for Team USA?
Yes. US national taekwondo team, featherweight (-68kg), top 4 at the 2015 US Open with a semifinal exit courtesy of my own hamstring. The full ride to De La Salle University came out of that run.
How do I work with Keith?
Through WinflowAI. I build cold outbound and CRM systems for marketing and advertising agencies. Book a call at winflowai.com, find me on Upwork, or email keith@winflowai.com.
Quick links
- Notes: the lessons, as they happen
- n8n creator profile: the free templates
- YouTube: build tutorials
- WinflowAI: work with me
That's the story so far. The notes are where it keeps updating.